The Lucky Guy
by Lucy Van Pelt
Summary: Buffy and Spike have it all. A blissful love life, a five-year-old child they adore and an apocalypse at every turn. This is my take on why Spike was de-chipped. Part five of the series that began with Protection. Chapter Seven is up. FINALLY!
1. Default Chapter

Title:  The Lucky Guy

Author: Lucy Van Pelt

Rating: R

Pairing:  Our beloved Buffy and our even more beloved vampire Spike

Spoilers:  None.  None whatsoever.  This is my own comfy Buffyverse.

Disclaimer:  These characters belong to other people.  I don't own them.  If I did, I certainly wouldn't have written that torrid attempted rape scene in Buffy's bathroom.  I have too much respect for them.

Summary:  Buffy and Spike have it all.  A blissful love life, a five-year-old child they adore and an apocalypse at every turn.  This is my take on why Spike would have sought out his soul.

Author's note:  This is the fifth installment of the series that began with Protection over two years ago.  My God, I need a life.

Dedication:  To Lynn.  My encouragement, my cheerleader, my friend.

*  *

CHAPTER ONE

            A trio of teenaged boys shuffles down the long corridor of the fifth floor of the Sunnydale Heights apartment building on a Tuesday night at 9:00.  With their bedtimes approaching and school tomorrow, they all know that they have to quickly disperse and return to their homes to spout off monosyllabic answers to their parents' close-ended questions.  How was school?  Did you learn anything new?  How do you think you did on your science quiz?  But they have one last stop to make before going home.  

            They pause now before apartment 5E.  From inside they can hear canned laughter coming from a TV set and occasionally the chortles of the viewer.  They know a young couple lives there with their five-year-old son.  These people are long-time residents and they always have a decorative wreath on their front door.  They give out the good candy at Halloween.  The husband drives an old car, a Dakota, one of the teenagers thinks.  Black as asphalt, windows tinted, rust stains everywhere.  The wife has an immaculate mini-van that she has yet to get a handle of.  On many occasions she has almost plowed down each one of them in the parking lot, always mouthing an apology with her well-glossed lips.  The husband is not so courteous.  He roars into the parking lot in his aged car, the motor loud, the stereo louder.  He smokes, and not many people do that anymore.  They always see him carrying cigarettes by the carton into the complex, smoking all the way to the door of his apartment.  He must always stub them out before he unlocks the door and enters his home.  Before the threshold are dozens of black holes marking the end of his nighttime jaunts to the grocery store for his nicotine fixes.

            "I wonder if he's home now," one boy wonders.

            "Yeah.  I saw his car in the parking lot," another boy answers.

            "What do you think he's doing?" the third boy asks.

            The first boy shrugs.  "Whatever vampires do at night."

            "I still think his wife is a vampire too," the third boy says.

            "Nah.  She goes out during the daytime.  She works at the Y.  My sister's taking her kickboxing class.  And she has to pick up their kid from school,"  the first boy says.

            "See, that's another reason why I don't think he's really a vampire," the second boy says.

            The other two boys raise an eyebrow to this.

            "Well, vampires are…vampires.  They're like dead humans, right?  And I don't think that dead people can really…do what you have to do to have a kid."

            "Maybe the kid's not his," the first boy says.

            "Or maybe he's on some vampire Viagra,"  the third boy snickers.

            "That kid looks just like him.  It's creepy.  They're like Dr. Evil and Mini Me in those old _Austin Powers_ movies," the second boy says.

            "I talked to him the other day," the third boy says.

            "Oh, you did not!" the first boy says with a massive eye roll.

            "Did too!"

            "OK, so you did.  And what did you talk about?"

            "Well, we didn't really talk.  He held the door open for me at the stairwell and I said 'thanks' and he said, 'you're welcome.'"

            "I talked to him too," the second boy pipes up.  "He was smoking outside two nights ago and I said 's'up?' and he said, 'Not a whole lot.'"

            "Oh, come on.  I've said 's'up' to him before.  But none of us _really_ has talked to him," the first boy insists.

            The third boy shrugs.  "I wouldn't know how to talk to a vampire.  I mean, what _do_ you say?  'How's that blood-sucking going?  Seen any good movies lately?'"

            At this point a peal of female laughter from inside startles them all.  

            The wife of the vampire enjoys her sitcoms, it seems.

            "What do you think _he's_ doing?" the first boy says softly, fingering the dried eucalyptus of the floral arrangement hanging on the door.

            "He's sleeping in his coffin," the third one says.

            "No, they wake up at night," the second boy says.

            "Because that's when they go out and look for blood," the first boy informs them.  "He transforms into a bat and flies around Sunnydale looking for victims.  Once he has found his prey, he appears in his human form, the lean, pale, muscular specimen of manhood he is, and says, 'I am a vampire.  I need your blood.'  And with that, he bares the victim's throat, sinks his retractable fangs into the victim's neck, and drinks until the victim falls limp."

A shared shiver goes through all of them as they involuntarily step away from the door.

            "Mom's expecting me," the second boy says.

            "I've got homework," the third boy says.

            "Snoop Dogg is on _Larry King Live_," the first boy says.

            The first boy's comment is met with peevish glances.  

            "What?  I like Snoop Dog!"

            "Snoop Dog," the second boy laughs as the three of them begin to walk away from the door.  "He sucks."

            "He sucks big time," the third boy says.

            "I like his old stuff," the first boy says.

            "_You _suck," the second boy says.

            "Old style.  It's coming back," the first boy asserts.

            "Yeah, right.  Keep dreaming," the third boy says.

            "'So he went home with Pooh, and watched him for quite a long time…and all the time he was watching, Tigger was tearing round the Forrest making loud yapping noises for Rabbit,'" Spike reads in a soft, bedtime-is-near lilt.  His blond ringlet-haired son lies beside him, head pressed against his shoulder.  The little boy's blue eyes pretend to read along.  "'And at last a very Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him.  And the Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all, in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce.  'Oh, Tigger, I _am_   glad to see you,' cried Rabbit.'"  Spike smiles and places a bookmark at Chapter Eight in _The House at Pooh Corner_.  He ruffles his son's unruly blond locks and pulls the covers up around him.  "That's all for tonight, Daniel.  Time for bed."

            "I'm glad Tigger got his bounce back," Daniel says, bunching up the covers in his hands.

            "Me too," Spike concurs.  "Wouldn't be much of a Tigger if he didn't have his bounce, would he?"  Spike leans in and presses a kiss on his son's forehead.  "Now goodnight.  Sleep well."

            He is about ready to snap off the bedside lamp when Daniel fires a question at him.  

            "Daddy, when you were a little boy, was that a long time ago?" he asks.

            Spike settles back momentarily onto the bed.  "Yes, a long time ago."

            "Did you know Mommy then?"

            "No," Spike says with a sigh.  "Your Mummy is a great deal younger than me.  We've told you that."

            "Oh, yeah.  I forgot," Daniel says.

            "Now goodnight, Daniel," Spike says, reaching for the lamp again.

            But he knows he won't get off that easily.

            "Daddy, are you old?"  Daniel asks.

            "Yes, very old," Spike says.  "Now quiet down---

            "How old are you?"

            Spike thinks about this.  Anything more than Daniel's five years seems ancient to him, so it doesn't matter how he replies.  With his son's lack of knowledge of numbers in mind, Spike says, "One hundred thirty two."

            Daniel tries to cover his yawn as he asks, "Is that old?"

            "That's really old."

            "Am I going to be old like you one day?"  Daniel asks.

            Spike grins at his son and smoothes his cheek.  "No, you won't.  You may be old, but not quite as old as Daddy."  

            "Why?"  Daniel asks.

            This is something that Spike doesn't want to get into right now.  It's something Spike hopes to avoid all Daniel's life.  But how to answer now?  Finally Spike says, "Because you're not like me.  You're a little boy now.  And when you're old, you'll be old like Daniel.  And I'm old like Spike."

            "Like Spike," Daniel repeats.  He hears his mother call his father Spike and it's weird to him.  Daddy is Daddy and Spike is someone else.  Spike is the man that Mommy talks to in non-musical tones.  Mommy talks to Spike in the kitchen after dinner is over and Daniel is on the sofa watching TV.  Now Spike is the one who is old like he will never be like.  "You're William," Daniel says.

            "I am William.  That's my real name," Spike says.

            "I can spell William now," Daniel says.

            "I know.  I saw it.  On that drawing you brought home."  The "a's" were backwards, but his son spelled out his own full name next to his crayon illustrated self-portrait.  In silver he wrote, Daniel William Hogan.   He was so proud it was as though he were seeing that name written on a sheepskin Harvard diploma.

            "Jesse couldn't spell his middle name," Daniel says.

            "We're not all born geniuses," Spike says.

            Daniel cocks his head at the unfamiliar word.  "What's geniuses?"

            "It means people who are really smart," Spike says.

            "Am I a geniuses?"  Daniel asks.

            "You certainly are.  At avoiding sleep.  It's time for bed now.  You've got school tomorrow."

            The little boy presses his curly head deep into his pillow and looks with a heavy hooded stare at the window.  The shade is drawn tight.  No light ever comes into this room or into any of the rooms.  This is something Daniel has grown up with as a rule, along with the edict against building a fort out of the sofa cushions and using the bed as a trampoline.  The apartment is dark all the time and lights are used even when it's daytime.  "Is it dark?"  Daniel asks.

            "It's after nine, Daniel.  It's very dark outside.  And you should be asleep."

            "I can never tell," Daniel says.  "You're 'lergic."

            Spike smiles.  He and Buffy have told Daniel that his Daddy is allergic to the sunlight and that's why the apartment has to be kept dark.  "I know," Spike says.

            "One day you will you not be 'lergic," Daniel asks.

            "Probably not," Spike says.  "It's not one of those things you get over.  Like that cold you had last week or that stomach bug you had the week before.  It stays with you.  Daniel, it's time for bed.  It's _been_ time for bed."

            "I'm not tired," Daniel says.

            "You will be when you get up tomorrow morning."

            "Can I have the TV on?"  Daniel asks.

            "No you may not!  You have to go to sleep!"

            "Why?"

            "Because Daddy says so, that's why.  So here."  He folds the covers over his son and kisses him once again.  "Night night."  Spike turns off the bedside lamp and heads for the door.

            Halfway to exiting, Spike is called on again.

            Spike harrumphs and makes a slow turn.  Daniel's blue eyes sparkle, even in the darkness.

            "You forgot to say what you always say," Daniel says.  

            "Oh yeah, I did, didn't I?" Spike says.  "Good night, Daniel.  And if you have monsters in your closet, Mummy and Daddy will kill them."

            Pleased with his father's parting line, Daniel snuggles under his blankets and at least makes an attempt at going to sleep.

            Spike ambles into the living room, a sustained "argh!" flowing from his lips as he crosses the room blind with his hands over his eyes.  He flops next to his wife on the sofa and lets his head fall back on the cushions.

            "Oh, that boy!" he says.  "What he won't do to get out of going to sleep!"

            "You can't really blame him," Buffy says pragmatically.  "He is the child of two creatures of darkness."

            "It's as though he thinks that sleep is what other people do.  And he wonders why seven o'clock comes so early."

            "He's always been that way.  I mean, remember when we first brought him home?  He didn't sleep for days.  And neither did we."

            "He's more exhausting now than he was then.  At least when he was a baby he didn't say, 'What is this smelly brown substance in my nappie and how did it get there?  Why does everyone talk to me like I'm an idiot?  What's this white stuff coming from Mummy and why can't I get enough of it?'"  

            "Aw.  I miss those days when he was so small and sweet.  I just can't believe I'm the mother of someone in kindergarten."

            Daniel's shift into the beginnings of academia has been hard on Buffy and Spike realizes this.  Though Daniel did go to pre-school, there was something shockingly formal about entering elementary school.  When she packed his lunch for his first day, she cried.  And when she handed him his Fairly _Oddparents_ lunchbox, she held back tears and then let them flow when she deposited him at the drop off spot.  He looked like such a little man and not a little boy.  He didn't turn five until four weeks after school started.  Four still sounded like a little boy's age.  Five was heading straight for ten and independence and not needing Mommy so much anymore.  She remembers when she weaned him from nursing and he started smacking his lips at the site of jars of Gerber rather than her breasts.  He uttered his first "mmm!" when he tasted applesauce.  Her breast milk never rated a "mmm!".  Spike lay in bed with her afterwards, sucking her nipples and murmuring "mmm!" during the most therapeutic, and more than a little Oedipal foreplay she has ever experienced.

            "Listen to what he did tonight at supper," Spike tells his wife.  "I put one of his kid's meals in the micro to cook.  One of his favorites:  frozen chicken tenders, corn, and that chocolate thing that I think is supposed to be some sort of pudding.  But he said he didn't want it.  Said he wanted fish sticks and french fries.  I told him we didn't have fish sticks and french fries.  Still he said, 'But I want fish sticks and French fries!'  Scrunched his face up, put his fists at his side, sort of the stance you take when you're brassed off about something.  I told him I couldn't make them magically appear like Willow could.  So then he says, 'Daddy, can I go to Aunt Willow's house for dinner?'"

Buffy throws her head back and laughs.  "I'm sorry, honey.  But you left yourself wide open for that one."

"So it seems."

"Did he eat?"

"Yeah, he ate."

"The kid's meal?"

"Most of it.  It was made a little more palatable when I started to eat it."  Spike notices the pile of opened envelopes on his wife's lap and the checkbook on her knee.  "Bill paying time?"

            "Oh yes," Buffy says.  "My direct deposit will hit the bank on Thursday, so hopefully they won't get there until then."

            "Anything I can do?"

            Buffy wrinkles her nose.  "You got $12,000?"

            "Not on me.  No."

            "Then you're worthless!"

            "Buffy, are we that much in the red this month?"

            Buffy sighs.  "No.  I was just thinking that $12,000 would be what we needed to put a down payment on a house."

            "A house?  Where did that come from?  How long was I in there with Daniel?"  Spike asks, suddenly agitated.

            "It's something I've been thinking about for a long time.  I mean, Daniel's five now.  When I was five I lived in a house with neighbors who lived in other houses, not in the same apartment complex.  Real neighbors who had backyards, green lawns and gazebos and sometimes pools.  There was an old woman named Jean.  She used to make these great little Mexican wedding cookies.  They were made of powdered sugar and some kind of sweet dough.  I would go over there just to smell them baking.  And then there was my friend Frances.  She was older and I thought she was cooler than cool.  She and I had roller-skates and one time when we were skating together she fell onto a board with a nail in it.  I had to hold her hand when she got her tetanus shot."

            "So you want us to move into a neighborhood where there are geriatric bakers and clumsy friends?"  Spike offers.

            "No, honey.  I'm saying that we're out-growing this apartment.  Face it.  When Dawn comes home from college she has no place to sleep except with Daniel and then we have to listen to her bitch and moan about how Daniel hit her with twenty questions all night and then smacked her in the face when he finally did get to sleep."

            After Dawn left for college, Daniel took over her room.  Where there were once glossy posters of boybands, there are now team pictures of Manchester United and All England Football.  Daniel idolizes NBA stars Jason Conley and Shaquille O'Neil and they are well represented as well, despite his father's insistence that basketball is a girl's game.  Spike thinks that basketball is rubbish.  Daniel asks Spike was rubbish is.

            "You have something in mind?"  Spike asks.

            "This," Buffy says, shoving a folded newspaper his way.

            There is a picture of a house, circled in red.  Three bedrooms, two baths, spacious living room, eat-in kitchen.  Good starter home.  Spike looks at the picture of the dilapidated split-level and swears he's looking at a Calcutta row house. 

            "Buffy, when I see the words good starter home that screams trips to Lowe's and the both of us covered in paint and plaster.  I've lived in crypts more palatial than this rat's nest."

            "It's not much, but it's all that we could probably afford."

            "125 grand is still pretty steep for something like that."

            "Houses here are expensive.  Our house on Revello cost $450,000."

            "Yeah, but your Mum had a posh job at an art gallery and child support payments coming in.  You work at the Y and I play Mr. Mum."

            Buffy sighs, her dreams of home ownership dashed by nagging reality.  As she drums her fingers on her knee, the diamonds in her platinum engagement ring catch the light of the table lamp.  The most expensive thing she has and it's on her finger.  They have such horrible money problems and yet she wears a diamond and platinum ring, paid for with all that Spike had in his crypt, including the broach of a woman who lived during the 1920's.  The dead woman was Spike's crypt mate for many years and he didn't think the broach had much value until he passed it under Anya's jeweler's loop of an eye and she declared it priceless.  

            "Don't even think about it," Spike says with the same sinister hiss he used to employ when threatening her with bodily harm.

            "I wouldn't," she says, giving her ring a little polish with the brush of her sweater-clad elbow.  It is too precious to her.  Sometimes it makes her gasp to even look at it and see its near twin on her husband's finger.  She remembers the first time they patrolled as man and wife and, after dusting a dozen vamps in an epic cemetery purge, they gave each other a high five and their rings clashed together.  They were both momentarily stunned and looked at each other with new eyes, their sacred bond suddenly made more real with the clink of metal.

He is different now and so is she, but their marriage has never been stronger.  Physically they have both changed.  Shortly after they were married, Spike began to experiment with growing out his locks and accepting the dirty blond hair he sported as a human.  Without the heavy applications of bleach, his hair sprang to new life, frizzing to a near afro at one point.  He tames it with gel and a low hairdryer setting.  He does tint his hair occasionally, highlighting the curls with a sprinkle of gold, to make it appear his hair has been sun-kissed, though he can never see the sun, ever.  He is still youthful; his face will never show the weight of his years or the extent of his sins.  He looks just as he always has: strong, muscular, handsome as hell.

            Age has made Buffy more angular, more lines and planes as opposed to hills and valleys.  Since shifting from shift work at the Bronze, she has been teaching kick boxing classes at the YMCA and working as a personal trainer to the fabulous and flabby in Sunnydale at Fitness Plus.  Her body has never been more toned and she has never been more into her game.  As agile and quick as any upstart teenaged Slayer, she still can dust vamps as accurately as she did when she was in her high school heyday.  Her face has matured and when she looks in the mirror she sees her mother's face staring back at her.  Sometimes she understands how a human can live forever.  Humans replicate themselves in their children.  She is beginning to realize her own Joyceness.

            But she is not Joyce.  She is Buffy.  She has to be resourceful every day, whether she's improvising a piece of wood from a picket fence as a stake, or robbing Peter to pay Paul when agonizing over how to get through another month hand to mouth.

            And Daniel needs school clothes.  Not just clothes to look good and impress his classmates, but clothes that fit, pants that don't look like he's anticipating a dyke breaking.  His pajamas are too small now.  He's grown an inch since the start of the year.  At the rate he's going, he's going to be taller than both his parents by first grade.

            Buffy exhales a breath.  "It's just so hard sometimes."

            "I know," Spike says comfortingly.  And he does know.  If he could work, he would.  Even though his marriage to Buffy would secure him a legitimate green card and residency in the U.S., there is that annoying death certificate which states he was deceased over a century ago.   He would work for Buffy, work until his knuckles sprang from the skin on his hands, but he is not authorized to be among the working class.  He stays at home with Daniel.  He keeps house, minds the marketing list, watches a whole lot of Lifetime and Price is Right.  He thinks that Markie Post is a better actress than most people think and that Bob Barker is a vampire masquerading as a human.  Just like him.

            "It just seems that every time I turn around, something is costing us money," Buffy says, eyeing the $35 late charge that was tacked onto their Visa bill.  What she could have done with that $35…

            "There are some things that don't cost a thing." Spike rolls his head in the direction of the bedroom.

            Buffy grins at him.  Then caution flares in her face.  "But do you think Daniel's asleep already?"

"We could check."

Spike takes her hand and the two of them walk together to Daniel's room.  A crack in the door reveals their child's sleeping form.  Quietly, Spike closes the door.

"We're all set," he says, eyes gleaming.

She doesn't have to even look at him to see the lust in his eyes.  She can feel it beaming from him and falling on her shoulders.  Now she feels his lips brush against her exposed skin, where the collar of her sweatshirt doesn't quite meet her neckline.  She smiles as he stretches the collar, letting a little more skin show, and kissing her there as well.  She allows her head to fall to one side and closes her eyes, a little smile taking hold of her lips.  

They inch towards the bedroom, their hands on one another as soon as the door closes.  Spike sweeps her into his arms and deposits her neatly on the bed.  One of Spike's hands finds the waistband of her sweatpants and he is running his fingers through the soft down underneath her lacy lavender panties.  He doesn't have to do much coaxing in that area; she is already wet.  She became wet the minute she heard him say that there are still some things that don't cost a thing.

            It's amazing how he can still make her feel like a hot and horny teenager after all this time.  It's as though she is feeling seven years slough off her with the lusty touch of his hand on her most private parts.

            "You're tense tonight, sweetheart," he murmurs over her skin as his lips brush against her abdomen.

            "Mmm…the bill-paying and work and thinking about houses and…OH!"  He is caressing the damp flesh between her legs with a few quick lashes of his tongue.  She lifts her backside enough for him to draw her pants down her thighs and push them off onto the floor.  She opens her legs and allows him better access as lets her head fall against the pillows.  "Oh, God…Oh, God…" she mutters, tweaking her nipples through her shirt, hoping that's where he'll go next.  

            All at once, there is light in the room, a new light introduced by the opening of the door.  Over Spike's shoulder, Buffy can define her son, standing in shadow, at the threshold of their bedroom.

            "Spike, stop!  Stop!"  she urges, panic rushing through her.

            "Mmmm?"  is Spike's busy-mouthed reply.

            "Spike, Daniel's here!"  she whispers sharply.

            Spike whips his head around and is on his feet instantly as Buffy shoves a pillow between her legs to cover her nakedness.  

            "Daniel, you're supposed to be asleep!"  says angrily to his son.

            The little boy is slow to answer, as though his mind is trying hard to assemble reasons behind his parents' activities here in the dark.  "I was.  But I woke up and I needed something to drink."

            "So go get something to drink!"  Spike retorts.  

            "But I can't reach the sink, Daddy."

            "Oh, for Christ's sake, Daniel!"  Spike snorts loudly as he takes his son by the hand.  "This has got to stop.  You have got to learn that night is when you sleep and the daytime is when you're up and playing and learning the golden rule and all that.  Your Daddy learned how to sleep at night."  They are at the sink now, and Spike is filling a glass with water.  He hands the glass to his son and watches him drink in shallow gulps.  

            When Daniel is finished, he hands the glass back to his father.  "You used to sleep during the daytime?"

            "Yes, I did."

            "Why?"  

            "Because I didn't have your Mummy to sleep with and now I do.  And right now I really, really want to sleep with your Mummy.  I really do," he says, the bulge in his pants still acting with a mind of its own.

            "Is that what you were doing?  You were going to sleep?"

            Spike isn't quite sure how to answer this, but as he's hoping for some last minute inspiration, he hears his wife's voice.

            "Daniel, come here, sweetie.  Let Mommy put you to bed," Buffy says.

            Daniel pads off slowly to his mother in his footie pajamas and takes her hand as she escorts him into his room.  Before the door seals off their conversation, Spike hears his son say, "Daddy used to sleep during the daytime.  Did you know that, Mommy?"  To which Buffy replies, "Yes, your Daddy used to do a lot of strange things before we were married."

            Spike steadies himself at the sink, running the faucet and dousing his face with a cool stream of water.  His vampire vision illuminates the hard water stains on the sink and his hearing is assaulted by the drippy faucet, which just won't be fixed.  They've had the super on it for weeks, and every time he promises that all he needs is a "special kind of washer" and it will be fixed for good.  Spike and Buffy suspect that the "special kind of washer" will come in after the floor has been flooded, as was the case with the refrigerator, which wasn't fixed until it nearly vibrated itself across the floor and into the hallway to terrorize small children and non-English speaking grandparents.  

            Buffy slips out of Daniel's bedroom and quietly closes the door behind her.  Spike meets her at their bedroom.

            "Is he all right?"  Spike asks warily.

            "Yeah.  I don't think he saw a thing.  I told him I had a stomach ache and you were rubbing it for me."

            He smiles at his petite wife's ingenuity.  "Do you think he believed you?"

            She shrugs.  "I don't know.  He seemed all right with it."

            He lowers his head and nuzzles her neck.  "Now where were we?"

            "Um, honey, I don't know about you, but my mood is totally blown.  I've got more bills to pay and I think I should keep watch for a while.  He didn't seem to be ready for sleep just yet.  So in case he wakes up, I'll just sit in the living room.  You can sit with me if you want."

            He sighs.  "I think you're right, Buffy."

            "About?"

            "I think we need a new place."

            "Yeah," she says, cupping his chin in her hand.  "That's a definite."  


	2. Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

"OK," Buffy says, delivering an uppercut to the three-piece suited vampire who has just discovered that hell really is other people.   "I think I've figured it out."

"Yeah?"  Spike says, in mid-tussle with his own fresh kill, a Steve Austin wannabe, complete with the John 3:16 written across his black tee shirt.

"If I can consolidate---omph!---all of our major credit cards, pay them off in, like, four years, I'd just have to make one payment once a month.  And it would be---oh!---about four hundred dollars."  Buffy spins the newbie into a nearby tombstone.  He rises again, undead and kicking, and she counters with a lethal punch to his chin, which only serves to daze him.  But she was expecting that.  She wants this fight to last.  It's helping her think things out.

"Sweetheart," Spike says, jabbing his vampire as though he were a punching bag, "Do you know how much a of strain a house payment would put on our financial situation?  I mean, you make, what, $25,000 a year?"

"$25,136," Buffy corrects.  "Plus, I get under the table money from the clients who want private self defense or Pilates lessons in their homes."  Buffy notices that the coat the vampire is wearing still has its price tag attached.  $675 for a shroud that will soon be dust.  She knows she has to lengthen the fight just so the bastard's family will get their money's worth.

"And how much is that?"  Spike asks, stretching the vampire's arm behind his back to the point where he can hear muscle detaching from bone.

"Oh, about $400 dollars a month," Buffy says, connecting again with her prey's chin.

"Then you'll need to find a lot more fatties before we can even THINK about setting up house somewhere else," Spike says.  Then to the vampire he says, "Say Uncle.  Uncle."

"You mother fucker!" the vampire spews.

"Watch the language, mate.  I'm a family man now," Spike says, snapping the vampire's arm completely out of its socket.

"Don't call my clients fatties," Buffy says petulantly as she thinks going Beowulf on her own opponent might not be a bad idea.  "They're nice women who have just found that food is their comfort."

"Then maybe you should feed them for a week and then they'll learn that food can also be their torture," Spike says, slamming the heel of his boot against the backside of his opponent and sending him to the ground, groaning and hissing.

"I'm choosing to ignore that remark because we have bigger fish to fry right now," Buffy says, tossing her husband a "have stake, will travel" look.

"Yeah.  Fish that you will over-salt and ultimately burn in the skillet," Spike returns, laughing as the vampire he is fighting still thinks he has some chance at victory.  He is actually trying to swat at Spike with his useless arm.

Buffy shoots him another glare. 

"Sweetheart, just remember, I'm considered a member of polite society now and a splinter in my heart would be manslaughter," Spike says, fisting the vampire's collar in his hands and bringing him to his feet.

"You know," Buffy says, pulling her stake out and angling for the vampire's heart, "Sometimes I still loathe you."

"Yeah, but sometimes you still love me," Spike says, readying his own stake for his own vampire's heart.

"Sometimes," she says, plunging the stake into her vampire's heart.  The price tag is the last thing to combust.

"Most times," Spike says, delivering his own fatal blow to the faux Steve Austin who seems so shocked that a little thing like a stake could put an end to something so virile and so bald.

Buffy is standing there, stake in hand, dust still settling.  She looks over at Spike who is in a cloud of dust of his own making.  Always, after the kill, he has to take a moment to congratulate himself and she's witnessing this now.  He is aglow in death.  But now he looks over at her.  His eyes are alive.  Though set in the face of a man dead a hundred plus years, his eyes have more life in them than any she has ever seen when he looks at her.  When he looks at her, he is looking at the now, not possibilities.  He's looking at her, in the moment, and loving every second that he has been chosen to stand at her side and be hers, for the forever they are allowed.

"So you're saying there's no chance in hell I can afford anything better than the apartment we live in now?"

"Sweetheart, I agree that we need to move to a bigger place.  I just don't want you working any harder than you already are."

"It doesn't have to be a palace," she says.   "Honey, I'd live with you in a sewer.  You know that." 

"I may hold you to that one day," he answers.

"I want Daniel to grow up in a place that doesn't smell like kitty litter and ramen noodles and…despair."

"So long as it's not a doublewide.  I'll be almost anything for you, but a PBR swillin', Toby Keith lovin', Dixie Chicks hatin' vamp, I will never be."

"Just so long as you're the Buffy lovin' vamp."

"Love's bitch.  At your service."

As Buffy is contemplating ways that Spike can service her in the graveyard, someone is intruding on their moment.  

"Excuse me," a voice says.

They both turn in the direction of a woman, or someone who was once a woman, now a vampire.  She is dressed smartly in a conservative suit, skirt cut just below the knee, square-heeled shoes suitable for the office.  Despite the twisted gnarl of a face her incarnation as a vampire has given her, her visage is perky beneath the arch of a pageboy hairdo.

"I'm sorry to intrude," the new vamp says, chuckling lightly,  "I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying from my little crypt with a view.  I can't believe my family opted for a crypt.  I thought for sure they would have buried me and left me for forgotten.  I guess it's only when you're at the exit door when you realize your value."

  Buffy and Spike look at her as though she has just been left behind by an alien mother ship and they are thinking of ways to phone her home.

"Hi!" the new vampire says brightly, extending her hand.  "I'm Dolores Hanssen.  Or I was.  Before I was sired.  God, if I knew what I didn't know then.  You just can't trust a guy in an Armani suit if he's room temperature.  Oh, well.  I learned my lesson.  I don't really mind being undead.  You meet a lot of interesting people.  You kill a lot of them, but I guess that's how it goes when you have to live by blood alone.  But still, I miss life, you know?  You probably know," the perky vampire says, nudging Spike.

"Right now, I'm missing your point," Spike says, the borrowed blood in him starting to boil.

"Oh, Tiger.  Grrr…You have your work cut out with this one," the vampire says to Buffy.  She laughs again in that patronizing way that makes both Buffy and Spike ready their stakes.  "Hey, whoa there.  I'm here to help you.  You're looking for a new house, right?"

  "Yeah," Buffy and Spike say in unison.  

  "I've got just the place for you.  Not too sunny, just a fringe on the outside of Sunnydale city limits.  Needs a little work, but it has great possibilities.  A stone fireplace in the living room, three bedrooms, two full baths, one half bath in the basement, which is finished.  I used to work in real estate and I was about to show this house to a couple, but, what can I say?  A few strawberry daiquiris, a vamp named Tony, and a night of enchantment in an alleyway led to…other things.  But I'd still show you this place, even if I don't get commission.  It's an ego thing, I guess."

"How much?"  Buffy asks, already entranced by the idea of a finished basement and three, count them, three bathrooms.  

  "Why don't I show it to you first and then you can tell me if it's worth the asking price?" the woman says. 

Buffy turns to Spike.  "What've we got to lose?"

"We can both take her if she's luring us into a nest or something," Spike says.

"I'm not worried about nests.  I'm just thinking what she's describing is just what we're looking for."

"I suppose we could take a look at the place."

"I'm curious."

Buffy and Spike turn to the woman.  "We'd like to see it."

"I'm going to destroy you with my super, super strength!"  Daniel Hogan declares for the benefit of the well muscled, loin cloth-clad action figure in his hand.

"You can't destroy me!  I've got super, DUPER strength.  Now you DIE!"  his playmate, Matthew Phelps, counters, voicing the superiority of his own action figure, a well-jointed GI Joe who has recently lost a hand, but can still contend with the best of them.

The two boys clash their plastic heroes in a duel to the death and the handicapped GI Joe is an early favorite, but he loses steam as his handler grows tired of the storyline and lets him fall on his face, to be stomped on and martyred by the mini-Ted Nugent on steroids figurine.

"This is dumb.  Let's do something else," Matthew says.

Daniel, who was enjoying the game, is nonetheless willing to concur with his older and therefore cooler friend.  "Yeah.  This is dumb.  We can watch a movie. We just got _The Matrix V_ on DVD."

"Seen it.  It was dumb.  And all the guys in it are stupid and they dress like your Dad."

"Yeah.  But my Dad's great," Daniel is quick to say.

"Yeah, he's all right."

"My Dad takes me to the park at night.  We get to play on the jungle gym all we want.  You wanna go with us sometime?"

"I guess so.  It's kinda weird to go to the park at night," Matthew says as he picks up a Nerf football and begins to toss it into the air.

"My Dad's 'lergic to the sun.  He can only go out at night."

"Yeah, that's what you told me before.  About a gazillion, million times," an annoyed Matthew replies.  He rolls over on his stomach and lets his chin rest on the football.  "I guess it's neat that you get to hang out with your Dad and all."

"Where's your Dad, Matthew?"  Daniel asks.

"He's dead, you dummy!"  Matthew says, punching Daniel in the leg.

At the age of five, Daniel knows two things:  you can only find things out by asking questions and Mommy and Daddy will always be there for him.  They will always live together in this little apartment and he will always be their son and his Daddy will read to him every night and his Mommy will take him to school every day and he will come home and watch television and have dinner and go to the park with his Daddy.  Now he knows something else: if you ask the wrong question, you get punched.  And Daddy can die.  

"Your Daddy's dead?" Daniel has to add insult to injury.  And he does get injured again.

"Yeah, my Dad's dead.  So what?  Your Dad's such a wimp he can't go outside when the sun's out.  If my Dad were alive, he'd be taking me to the park all the time, and to the pool and to Disneyland and to movies in the afternoon and to Applebee's.  Your Dad can't do that stuff."

"But one day, maybe, he won't be 'lergic," Daniel says, suddenly solemn in his thoughts of a world without Daddy.

"Or one day he'll be so 'lergic he'll die like my Dad did."

"Was your Dad 'lergic too?"

"No, he had cancer."

"What's cancer?"

"It's something that makes you die, stupid!"

A thought comes into Daniel's head.  _What if Daddy really isn't 'lergic and has cancer?  _

Daniel leaps to his feet and dashes into the next room where Matthew's mother, and his sitter for the evening, is curled up on the sofa watching TV.

"Candyce, when are Mommy and Daddy going to be home?" he asks.  

Candyce doesn't remove her stare from the TV as she says, "Oh, sweetie.  They said they wouldn't be long.  A couple of hours."

  "Is it still a couple of hours before they're coming home?" he asks.

"They've been gone about an hour.  They'll be home soon."

"Can I call them?"

There is a sob in Daniel's voice that distracts Candyce from the goings on in the crime lab on _CSI: Detroit _and she turns to the little boy to find his face ashen and his eyes wild with fear.

"Oh, Daniel," she says soothingly, cupping his quivering chin in her hand.  "What's the matter?"

"I need to talk to Daddy."

"Why, what's wrong?"

"I just need to talk to Daddy."

 Candyce nods.  "OK.  I'll call them for you."

 "Here it is," the realtor/vampire says as she opens the door with a twist of her now powerful hand.  "We can all go in because no one lives here anymore."

Spike acts as though he doesn't quite believe her and puts the toe of his boot against the invisible barrier he thinks will be there.  But she is right; he is invited in without a bit of deliberation from the powers that be.

The outside of the house looked ordinary:  a box-like house with hedges for trimming and a lawn for cutting and a sidewalk for sweeping.  But inside, once the light is switched on, it appears like something that has been pulled from a magician's hat.  Voila!  Where there was once nothing, there is everything in the world Spike and Buffy could possibly desire in a house.

"The stone fireplace is really quite unique," the realtor/vampire tells them.  "There was another house here on this site and it burned around the turn of the century.  This house was built up around it.  So you have a little of Sunnydale's early history right here in the living room."

Buffy swipes a hand across the coolness of the stone and marvels at the black stains of decades of fires in the hearth, imagining the glowing faces gathered around the fires that burned there.  "And it still works?" she asks.

"Oh yeah.  Completely functional."

Spike is taking his time, walking across every board, looking for signs of creakiness or foundation failure.  The floors gleam as though freshly Swiffered and polished.  "Hardwood floors?"  he asks.

"Yep.  Hardwood.  Yellow pine," the realtor/vampire says.  "Just wait until you see the kitchen!"

The kitchen is fully furnished with stainless steel appliances that look as though they were installed yesterday.  Already Buffy and Spike are imagining the refrigerator completely covered in Daniel's finger paintings.  The recessed track lighting reveals another blemish-free hardwood floor and plenty of room for a large kitchen table.  The window over the sink overlooks a yard where there is a small playhouse with its own deck porch.

"The family here had a son.  Sometimes he would sleep out there," the realtor/vampire explains.  "Oh, and by the way, this house is close to the elementary school.  But, I guess that's not really a concern for you two."

"No, we have a son," Buffy says, looking at the playhouse covetously, thinking this is the best feature she's seen so far.  

"You do?" the realtor/vampire asks.  "I learn something new about our species every day!  I didn't think we could---

"You can't," Spike says, trying to spare the neophyte vamp of any delusions of re-starting the ticking of her biological clock  "But I did."  

"But how?" she asks, still floored.

"We're still not really sure, but, hey.  It happened," Buffy shrugs.  "Honey, can't you just see Daniel out there playing for hours and hours?  And she's right.  The elementary school is just around the corner.  That would cut down on my driving time in the morning."

Spike nods and smiles.  "That would mean a little bit more time for…"  He winks at her and inserts his thumbs into the front pockets of her jeans.  

Buffy nearly blushes as she catches the implications of his words.  

"Would you like to see the bedrooms?" the realtor/vampire asks.

The pair follows the realtor/vampire up the newly carpeted twelve steps to the second floor.  The realtor/vampire is close behind them and she instructs them to turn right at the top of the stairs.  Down the long corridor an ivory-colored door opens to a large room that is entered by two steps leading down to yet another hardwood floor.

"Wow!"  Buffy says, her voice echoing.  "It's so huge!"

"There were bunk beds in here.  Where the son and a friend could sleep," the realtor/vampire says.

"And the parents?"  Buffy asks.

"Down the hall.  The crowning glory of the whole place," the realtor/vampire gushes.  

Buffy and Spike are led down the hall now to a giant room that could very contain their whole apartment.  When the door is opened, it appears they are looking at a gymnasium. 

"The former owners had a California King bed in here.  They put it right in the middle of the room."

Buffy and Spike are looking back at the hallway, thinking it will be a suitable runway for Daniel's early morning take-off's in which he lands in their bed and giggles at Spike and squeals, "Daddy's naked!  Daddy's naked!"

"You should see the bathtub.  The lady of the house used to love her baths," the realtor/vamp tells them.  

Buffy opens the door to what she thinks is some kind of a woman's paradise.  The immaculate blue tiled floor leads to a sunken Jacuzzi tub.  To the right of the tub is a separate shower with gold fixtures, completely enclosed in glass.  There are two marbled sinks and plenty of space between the sinks for Buffy's jumble of beauty products and sweet perfumes.  She is looking at herself in the mirror, entranced by how large her pupils look in the light of the two dozen 75 watt bulbs that glow around the mirror above the sinks.  The one who can't look in the mirror is lowering himself into the Jacuzzi tub, dreaming of how the jets will hit him in all the right places.

When Buffy eyes her husband, in such sublime ecstasy, she can't help wanting to join him in his pretend bath.  She makes her way over to the tub and gets in with him.  She is thinking about all the vanilla-scented nights she will have in this bath and all the trouble she will have getting out, especially if Spike is with her.  His arms enfold her as she rests her head against her chest.  The realtor/vampire knows her presence is no longer needed and she pads down the hall for the duration of the permanent newlywed's bathtime.

 "This is perfect!"  Buffy says gleefully.

"Yes, it is," Spike says, resting his head against the back of the tub in a gentle sigh.

 "So what do you think?"  Buffy asks as her husband strokes her hair.

"I think this is a dream," he replies, kissing her left temple.

"It's probably really expensive," Buffy sighs.  "Hardwood floors?  A stone fireplace?  A Jacuzzi tub?  All add up to something Buffy and Spike can't afford."

"$550,000," the realtor/vamp says from the hallway.

Buffy frowns as Spike dampens her forehead with another succulent kiss.  "See?  Something we can't afford."

 "So we can't get this house," he says to her.  "We can refinance.  And I can look about getting one of those under the table jobs myself."  He smirks and laughs.  "God.  When a man says that, it sounds so naughty."

"You'd really go out and get a job?"  

"Of course.  I have many, many talents."

"Under the table?"

"You know what I do under the table is among my many talents," he says, snaking his tongue out between his teeth.

"Bad boy!" she says, playfully slapping him.

"Yeah, but you love the bad boy."

"But I love the good boy too," she says, swirling her fingertip over one of his pronounced pecs.  

"Good boy's only here because you loved the bad boy, sweetheart."

Buffy smiles up at her sweet husband.  He has always been able to put things in perspective for her, even when they were bitter enemies.  She knows there has never been a person alive or dead who knows her as well as Spike does.  Sometimes their simpatico takes her breath away.  

"My baby," she says, cupping his chin in her hand and inclining her mouth for a kiss.

Just now, a cell phone rings.

Buffy pats herself down for the cell phone, but she doesn't have it.  Spike rifles a hand inside his jacket and extracts the Nokia both he and his wife use when they are out and about and slaying.  Someone is calling them from home.

"Yeah," Spike says as he strokes his wife's hair.  The he suddenly goes stiff and clutches his head.  "Daniel, what's the matter?  Daniel…Daniel, calm down.  What's wrong?"

Buffy can hear her son sobbing on the other end.  "What is it?" she asks, her heart fluttering.

"I don't know.  He's not making any sense.  Something about my being allergic to cancer or something."

Buffy grabs the phone, commandeering the situation with the hush of her soothing words.  "Daniel, honey, Mommy and Daddy are coming home right now.  Don't worry."

"I don't want Daddy to die!"  Daniel says through uncontrollable sobs.

"Honey, it's OK.  We're coming home.  Don't cry, sweetie.  Please don't cry.  We'll be home very, very soon."

"You're coming home right now?"  Daniel sniffles.

"Yes.  Right this very minute.  I love you, sweetie."

"I love you too, Mommy.  Come home!"

"We are.  We are right now."  Buffy snaps the phone shut and leaps out of the tub, offering a helping hand to her husband.  "We gotta go."

"I sensed that," Spike says, taking his wife's hand.  "Is he OK?"

Buffy shakes her head.  "He seemed kind of freaked.  He needs us."

Halfway down the stairs, the realtor/vamp calls to them.

"Hey, you guys!  Are you taking the house?"  she asks.

Buffy and Spike look at each other, knowing that in their wildest dreams they couldn't even begin to own such a house.

Somewhere in the middle of Oak Street, Buffy is still wiping the vampire dust off her champagne-colored jacket.  

"I'm glad we killed her," Buffy says, "Showing us something we could never have."

"I think we'll still find something.  Perhaps not as nice as that house, but something just for us," Spike answers, his steely gaze aimed at the horizon where there is the most luminous moon he has ever seen.  It is orange and aglow with equal parts of smog and sun.  He draws Buffy closer to him as they head towards the brilliant moon.  He only hopes this is a harbinger of something good.


	3. Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

            The minute Spike and Buffy open the door to their apartment, there is a flash of lightning white hair and tears that they recognize as their son, flying towards them.  He wraps his arms around both of them, crying harder than either of them has ever seen him cry, even when he was a newborn and his tears couldn't be explained.

            "Moomy…d-addy…don't want you to leave me ever," Daniel sobs against them.

            "I am so sorry," Candyce tells them, tucking her bottom lip under her teeth.  "Matthew here told Daniel that his father was dead and things kind of escalated from there."  She is holding her own son by the shoulders, presenting him for interrogation.

            But there is no interrogation for Matthew.  Only for Mommy and Daddy.

            "Matthew said you're gonna die!"  Daniel says, his chin trembling in that heart-wrenching way that make Buffy and Spike want to go out again and kill everything evil in the world, if such an action would just make things all right for Daniel.

            "Oh, sweetie," Buffy says, hoisting her son into her arms.  He lays his head on her shoulder and as his forehead rests against her chin, she can feel how heated his skin is from crying.

            "Matthew, say you're sorry," Candyce urges her son with a slight nudge.

            "I'm sorry," the child mumbles, eyes cast downward, hands deep in his pockets.

            "We're OK," Buffy says, stroking the springy curls on her son's head.  "Thanks for looking after him tonight."

            "I'm just so sorry," Candyce says.  "Matthew should have never---

            "It's OK," Buffy assures her.  "It was about time for a mortality speech anyway.  Here, Daddy.  Suit up Daniel for bed.  I'll be in in a minute."

            Spike takes his son into his arms and the boy clings to him automatically as though he were magnetically charged to his father.  Daniel spews a splat of mucus from his nose onto Spike's shoulder and his father just holds him closer.

            Daniel is choking on sobs all the way to his bedroom as Spike jiggles him up and down, as he did when he was a baby.  That action didn't do any good then and it's not doing any good now.

            "Don't you worry a bit about Daddy going away from you," Spike tells his son in a delicate whisper against his temple as he imprints a kiss there.  "I'm not going anywhere."

"But Matthew said---

"It doesn't matter what Matthew said."  Spike deposits his son on the floor of his room as he searches for clean pajamas in the top drawer.  Finding the dinosaur thermals Daniel loves so much, he shuts the drawer with a quick shove of his elbow.  "It doesn't apply to me."

Once dressed in his pajamas, and once he makes a dozen or so passes against his teeth with his toothbrush, Daniel is ready for bed.  His sleepy-eyed appearance is dueling with his innate inquisitiveness as Spike pulls down the covers of Daniel's bed and the boy gets in.

"You're not going to die?"  Daniel asks.  His eyes are still engorged with tears and when Spike sees those bright blue eyes in standing water, he _does_ want to die.  

But Daniel never wants him to die.

Buffy and Spike have often discussed when and where they will bring up the discussion about Spike's immortality.  Daniel isn't ready for a full-throttle retrospect on the unlife of William the Bloody.  Buffy and Spike have figured that the revelation of Spike-as-monster will come about around the time of the birds and the bees talk.  They _hope_ anyway.

Spike lowers himself onto his son's bed, resting against Daniel.  The boy's body conforms neatly against Spike's and still there are the shakes of leftover sobs from the early terror that one day Daniel might lose his father.

"Don't you worry," Spike says, kissing his son once more.   "I'm here for a reason.  And so are you.  You see, at one time your Daddy didn't know why he was here.  Why he had ever been born.  What place he had in the universe."

"What's the universe?" Daniel asks, still suppressing sobs.

"Where we live, Daniel.  Where all of us live," Spike says, not wanting to get all Carl Sagan on his son.

"Oh," Daniel says.

Spike is relieved that no other question follows.  "I knew why I was here when I fell in love with your Mummy," Spike says, his countenance lifted by the remembrance of his wife dancing in the daring light blue halter-top she was wearing when he first saw her.  "I'm here to love and protect your Mummy." He is reliving the tender memory of when Daniel was still in his mother's stomach, when he was yet to be unveiled to the world.  There was so much mystery, so much longing.  And when Buffy rested her stomach against him while they were in bed, and the baby that would be Daniel kicked during the night, he felt life and everything precious and sacred about it.  "And then when you were born, I had a second purpose.  To love and protect you.  And I'm going to do that forever.  Because I'm not like other fathers.  I do have forever.  I'm not going to die."  I already have, Spike wants to say.  But he doesn't.

"What about Mommy?"  Daniel has to ask.

This past February, Buffy turned twenty-six, something no other Slayer has ever done.  When she blew out the candles on her birthday cake, she thanked Xander, Willow and Giles for making that milestone possible, but she also gave kudos to her husband, quipping that marrying her mortal enemy had been the best decision of her life.

"We're working on Mummy," Spike says, the enormousness of his responsibility to his wife taking a brutal hold of him, so much so that he cannot speak for a few minutes.  I've got to keep her alive.  I've got to keep her alive, he repeats to himself, the prime directive of his existence.  Because if she dies, he doesn't know what will become of him.

He will love her through the rest of her twenties, when youth is still taking hold of her and she is solid and sinewy and a bit too thin for his liking.  There will be the thirties when she's beginning to give way to gravity, late thirties, probably.  She will still be stunning, he assures himself.  In middle age, she will be huggable in her fleshy spread that she will try to defeat in training and training others.  She will be a striking fifty-year old, silver of hair and foxy as when he found her dancing in that halter-top.  She will wear that for him in her sixties and seventies, when her boobs no longer fill the front of it and she wonders if she still looks good.  She will still be alive.  She will still look good to him as long as she's alive.

"Pooh, Daddy," Daniel says.

Spike at first thinks this evening's trauma has forced his son back into the scatological time in his life when he was obsessed with poo, specifically if it were in the toilet where it should be and not in his diaper.  Daniel has to say it several times before Spike realizes what he's talking about.

"Oh, Pooh!  _The House at Pooh Corner_!"  Spike reaches for the slim paperback on Daniel's nightstand.  "Of course.  Where were we?  Chapter seven, is it?"  Spike lifts the bookmark and begins reading.  "'Half way between Pooh's house and Piglet's house was a Thoughtful Spot where they met sometimes when they had decided to go and see each other, and as it was warm and out of the wind they would sit down there for a little and wonder what they would do now that they _had_ seen each other.'"

Suddenly the text seems to be not so much about Pooh and Piglet and everything about Buffy.  Spike remembers the days when he and Buffy had their own Thoughtful Spots where they would meet, if they knew Dawn would be home or if they just needed to add a little excitement to their sex life.  Sometimes it would be in his musty crypt, or at a construction site, or in a house where nobody lived anymore.  The best times were in her bed, the one place he had been exiled from for so long.  How many nights he pined to lie in those vanilla scented sheets.  It didn't matter if they were having sex or not.  Just to be there, with her, with her not staring stakes at him, with her just looking at him as though he were the only person she had ever taken to this bed and had loved so thoroughly and completely.

He still loves waking up next to her in that bed.  The novelty has not worn off, not as long as the smell of her is there.

Just as he is thinking of her, she appears at the door.  She has changed into her nightgown and has scrubbed the make-up from her face.  Even flushed from exfoliating, and her hair damp and clinging to her face, she is so gorgeous to him.  She mouths the words, "Everything OK?" and he nods as he continues to read.

Spike finally enters their bedroom an hour later.  Tonight merited more than just a single chapter.  Spike read two chapters, voicing each character with equivocal passion and verve, giving his best performance to date, he thought.  He is tired tonight and is languid in the removal of his clothes.  Buffy is already in bed, reading her own book, _Vampyre, Version 1506_ with a CD ROM which she will run as soon as Dawn comes home and shows her how to run it.

Once he is undressed, Spike collapses beside her.  He rests the back of his left hand against his forehead as he wonders aloud, "What are we going to do?"

"Honey, I've been thinking about this," Buffy says, inserting a bookmark into her book and placing it on the bedside table.  She lies down on her stomach and begins to play with the little transparent hairs under Spike's navel.  "If you can get a job, even a part time job, and if I ask for a raise at the Y---

"That's not what I'm talking about," Spike says darkly, jerking her hand away from her endeavors to raise his arousal.  He holds her hand and delicately places it against his lips.  "We're going to have to tell him sooner or later about me."

"Oh," she says, sitting upright, ultimately throwing her back against the cushion of pillows separating her from the wrought iron of the headboard.  "Yeah.  We have to do that."

"Have you ever thought about how we're going to do that?"  Spike asks.

Buffy sighs.  "Just about every day since he was born," she says, folding her arms.

Spike places a kiss on his wife's bare shoulder, swirls a finger in that spot and kisses her there again.  "He needs to hear the truth from us.  And we need to tell him before the kids in his class start getting suspicious.  Halloween is coming up and there will be much talk about ghouls and beasties in his class.  And that Matthew would be none too good to tell him one day that I'm a vampire.  He has to hear the truth from us."

Buffy knows this.  She still hates herself for not telling Dawn about her existence as they Key before she found out about it from books and papers, and not from the people who loved her.

Buffy cups her husband's chin and kisses him lightly on the lips.  She kisses him again, embracing the coldness of his lips and the unnatural position of him in her bed, under her sheets, worrying about a child they have together in the next room.

"I don't want him to know everything," Spike says, suddenly shy, his chin dropping to his chest.  "If he knew everything, he might not love me anymore."

"I don't think you have to worry about that, honey," Buffy says sweetly.  "When the time comes, I think he'll understand that you were a different person before, living under different circumstances.  I mean, the rugby players from Uruguay had to tell their children about eating their teammates after their plane crashed in the Andes."

"Yes, but they weren't evil.  They were just hungry."    

She knows a lot about what he did before he loved her and it's enough to make her sick.  She is comforted time and again by the knowledge that he is not the man he was before.  And he is sorry about what he has done in the past.  Every time he embraces his son, she knows he detests his past actions and she realizes that everyone, even a cold-blooded killer, deserves a second chance.  She has given him numerous second chances all in the name of love.

Buffy kisses Spike's lips, remembering how such an action was once so repulsive to her.  Now she just dives in for more.  And he is receptive.  So much so, she knows she doesn't need her nightgown anymore.

Positioned on top of him, with Spike inside of her, his hands around her waist, she doesn't have a care in her head.  When he twirls a thumb against the knot of nerves between her legs and kneads it in a circular motion, she cries out in pleasure and pain.  

She falls against him, her chin hitting the sharp protrusion of his collarbone.  He rubs his hand down her spine, ultimately cupping her tight butt in his hand.

"We have to tell him," Spike says as his wife rests on top of him.

"I know," Buffy says, ears alert to any evidence that Daniel might be awake and aware of his parents' activities.  "When the time comes, we'll know.  We'll know.  Just like when we fell in love.  We knew when the time was right then.  We'll know when the time is right to tell him the truth."

His wife lies sleepily against him, seemingly ready for a night's rest.  But as he thinks she's about ready to drop off, she reaches down to the floor for her gown and puts it back on.  She still lets him hold her, her head resting against his broad chest.  As he looks down at her as she nods off, the same old fear grips him once again; this is short-lived, this is ephemeral, this is something that won't last because something this good couldn't be for all eternity.  

It's what wakes him with a start some nights when he is restless in his dreams and it's what follows him through the day when he is comfortable in his position as house husband, he who wields the dust buster and can blot out a grape juice stain on the carpet with just a rag and a little club soda.  

To think that it all could be gone with a careless whisper, that something murmured between classmates could end it all.  He already knows the boys in the apartment complex talk about him.  He's heard them speculating behind their closed front door and has heard their discourses on the fifth floor landing when he is able to sneak up on them, his footfalls unheard until he is right up on them, smirking over a bag of groceries, smoking, and wondering which one will be brave enough to say, "Wassup?" this time.

It's such a fine line he treads, between humanity and depravity.  He has been excellent in his costume thus far, chucking the black of villainy for blues and indigos, but never red.  Red reminds Buffy too much of when he snarled that she would die on a Saturday.  He is beyond wearing the red.  He likes to think so anyway.  He has a life, more than any life he had when he was actually alive.  A wife, a child, a place in society…

A dark secret.

He watches _Sesame Street_ almost every day with Daniel and Daniel loves The Count.  Daniel doesn't know that the Count is a vampire.  He doesn't know that the bats in the background, the thunder sound effects, and the Count's "ah ah ah's" are all sort of safe Gothic allusions that kids will be safe with, since, to Spike's speculation, the Count must have a chip also which keeps him from snacking on Kermit.

There are so many things he never wants revealed.  But one day the question will arise, "What is a vampire, Daddy?" and he will have to answer, "A vampire is a creature who has to kill for blood.  I am one, but I am not a killer anymore.  I was.  I killed.  I killed thousands.  Some as young as you, Daniel.  Some younger.  I killed because I had to live.  I needed blood to stay alive.  I still do."

How much longer will he have to hide?  How much longer will the cow's blood in the pitcher in the fridge be unquestioned?  Daniel just knows that pitcher is Daddy's special Kool Aid and he can't have it, because it is just for Daddy.  He wonders how much longer Daniel will love his old man after he tells him…

But it doesn't have to be everything all at once as he tries to settle into sleep.  Spike slips down into the covers, briefly toying with the idea of going out on the stoop for a cig.  As he changes positions, he hears Buffy murmur, "Unconditional."

Spike freezes, not wanting to wake her.  But then she mumbles, "Mmmmm…" and snuggles up against him.

"Unconditional?" he asks, placing a kiss on the part of her hair.

"Hmmm hmmmm,"  she replies in her drowse.  "Doesn't matter."

Spike doesn't know what to think of her unconscious ramblings.  It seems she is answering all his eternal questions.  

"What are you saying, love?" he asks, kissing her again.

She smiles sweetly in her sleep and kneads the skin of his chest like a kitten seeking sustenance.  "There's cheese?  Where?"

He chuckles lightly.   She is dreaming and he lives for these moments when she is soft and lost in the never land of sleep.

He is gleaning some truth from her loose-lipped talk.  Perhaps in this land of cheese she finds herself in while sleeping, there is a little boy who isn't afraid of his father now and won't be afraid of him when he knows the truth.

He snuggles down next to her, kissing her several times as she continues to audibly dream about cheese and, after the last kiss, of fondue and how yummy that is.

"My love," he says, holding her close.

"Hmmm…drippy cheese," is her response. 


	4. Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

            "OK, I think that's probably enough for today," Buffy tells Candyce.

            Candyce slides off from the giant inflatable ball and begins her after workout stretches on the floor.  "Gawd, Buffy, I really felt that one.  That was really great."

            "And you're getting some great results now too, you know," Buffy says, uncapping her bottled water and taking a generous swig.  

            "Really?" Candyce says as she suddenly becomes conscious of the overlap of belly that is never more evident than when wearing stretch spandex pants under an enormous tee shirt.  "I still have a long way to go."

            "You'll get there soon enough."

            "I'll never be like you, though."

            Buffy knows that her friend is referring to her svelter-than svelte figure; the kind that almost doesn't make a shadow it's so tiny.  But no, Candyce will never be like her.  And she is lucky in that regard.  

            "Being Buffy isn't the greatest thrill in the world," the Slayer remarks.

            "Oh, come on, Buffy.  You've got the best body ever.  You're absolutely perfect."

            "Well, you know, I do have these stretch marks from Daniel," Buffy says, running her finger along the half dozen tiny white rivulets along her firm belly.  "They're not going anywhere."

            "They're hardly noticeable, unlike my thunder thighs.  And my huge, huge ass," Candyce says, scooting her legs together as though trying to camouflage their size.

"Spike likes your ass," Buffy says, remembering how her husband practically had to lick his lips the last time he watched Candyce leave their apartment.  She was wearing just a pair of faded blue sweatpants, but they stretched across all the right places and he grinned until Buffy playfully slapped him back into his skinny butt reality. All night he kept on commenting that Buffy's ass was best when she was pregnant…so full and round…he could have just eaten it.  "He says so all the time."

A look of discomfort clouds Candyce's face, and it has nothing to do with the fact that her fingers are wrapped around the toes of her right foot.  "I still feel bad about what Matthew said that night."

"You shouldn't be.  He's just a kid.  He says whatever comes to mind," Buffy says matter-of-factly, though the evening is still an influence on her family's daily life.  Daniel wanted to stay home just the day before so that he could watch _Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood_ with his father because he swore it was a new one he had never seen.  But Buffy and Spike knew there wasn't a new _Mr. Rogers'_ show.  Fred Rogers has been dead for years.

"But I know how much Daniel loves his father," Candyce says while stretching out her heel.  "I like to think that Matthew and his father would have been just as close as Daniel and Spike are.  You know.  Now."

"Spike's a wonder," Buffy says.  And she really means it.  Even now, in the still of the evening, when the dishes are cleared and the TV is on in soft tones in the living room in an attempt to lull Daniel to sleep, she looks from the sidelines and sees her husband, the erstwhile William the Bloody, lying soundlessly on the sofa, occasionally reading or doing a TV Guide crossword puzzle (he nails them in under a minute.  No man knows TV better, or a five-letter word for "beginner").  Daniel's eyes are glued to _Sponge Bob_ or _The Fairy Odd Parents_, or to the numerous Harry Potter movies he has seen hundreds of times.  He likes his Daddy to watch TV and movies with him, especially after he found out Daddy grew up without moving pictures.  But Mommy has been watching movies since the release of the classic _Valley Girl_ so she doesn't have to watch unless she wants to.  "It's all really a wonder to me."

"You're one of the lucky ones, Buffy," Candyce says, stretching over her other leg.  "To have a stay at home Dad.  And he's such a great father.  Do you and Spike ever think about having another child?  I mean, you're still young.  Do you ever think about it?"

"Oh…"  Buffy says.  And she can't think of anything else to say momentarily.  To the outside world, even to someone who has recently been brought in as an insider, there's no reason why this happy and vigorous couple couldn't have more children.  It's a novelty still for Buffy to have a friend who doesn't know about her true vocation and that she has been able to keep that under wraps, along with her husband's non-human status, for so long.  It's so nice to know one person who doesn't know about her and the dead man in her bed.  But that doesn't keep her from occasionally feeling guilty about her secretiveness.

Candyce sits up, seeing that her probing question has struck a particular delicate nerve.  "Buffy, I'm sorry.  Should I not have---?

"Not, it's OK.  It's OK.  Really.  It's just that…" She wonders how to phrase this just right without inviting unasked for pity or further queries.  "Spike and I probably won't be able to have any more children," is what comes out.  "It took us completely by surprise when Daniel was born."

"Really?"

Buffy nods.  "That doesn't mean that we don't think about it occasionally.  I know in his heart of hearts, Spike would love to have a daughter and Daniel never fails to include a baby brother on his Christmas wish list.  He'd be a great older brother, I'm sure.  But I just don't think that another child is in the cards for us.  Besides, we really couldn't afford another child and I think Daniel would be very jealous if Spike and I had another baby.  He wouldn't be able to manage."

"I really didn't mean to pry, Buffy."

"It's OK, Candyce.  I have a nice family the way it is.  We're really happy."  She tips her bottle towards her lips and takes another gulp.  "Speaking of Daniel, it's about time for me to pick up the little monster from school."  

"Is it almost three already?" Candyce asks incredulously.  

"Yep.  Time flies when you're being stretched into unnatural positions."

"Well, I guess I'd better get going to.  I've got to take Matthew for a pair of new shoes.  The way that kid grows.  It's just incredible.  You want to come with us?  Maybe we could take the boys for something to eat at the arcade place at the mall."

"No thanks.  While the idea of eating pizza while being entertained by an animatronic band singing country western music is tempting, I think I'll pass.  Besides, Spike gets really lonely by himself in the apartment all day.  He'll be looking for us to show up at the usual time."

"Well, then why don't you pick him up and we could all go?"

"No, uh.  He…Well, you see, Spike…he really doesn't like to eat pizza…not before eight o'clock.  He's…English and the idea of eating anything but buttered scones and lady fingers in the middle of the afternoon…it's just weird to him."

"Oh, stupid me!" Candyce says, bashing herself on the forehead with a clinched fist.  "Spike's sun allergy!"

Buffy knows the years since Candyce's husband's death haven't been easy for Candyce and she hasn't quite gotten over the feeling that she is cheating on her husband when she goes out on dates, so her social life is nearly non-existent.  An afternoon with friends and two kids is quite an outing for her.

"Oh, but hey," Buffy says,  "On Friday night, why don't we all go see a movie or something?"  Buffy suggests.  "I really need to get Daniel out of his Harry Potter/Winnie the Pooh rut.  The new Scooby Doo movie is coming out on Friday.  Daniel loves Scooby Doo and Spike really has a thing for that actress who plays Daphne.  He says that she looks like me, but I don't see it."

"That would be fun," Candyce says.

"Great.  So it's a date?"

"It's a date."

That afternoon Daniel rushes into the apartment brandishing a piece of construction paper like a battle flag.

"Look, Daddy!  Daddy look!" he exclaims, shoving the piece of paper into his father's immediate view.

Spike studies his son's latest artistic, made stiff with multiple applications of glue and layer upon layer of colored paper.  "Well, well.  What do we have here?" he genuinely wants to know.

"That's how the three of us would look if we were all jack-o-lanterns," Buffy beams as she removes Daniel's light blue windbreaker.  "The first one on the left is you, my dear."

"Oh, I see!"  Spike says, amusement flickering in his eyes.  "And look how handsome I am, even with fifty percent of my teeth missing and what appears to be a receding hairline."

"My teacher said it was really, really good.  Look!  She gave me a gold star!"  Daniel proclaims proudly, pointing to the foil emblem at the bottom of the drawing.

"Then we will have to find a special place for this beauty.  Let's go to the fridge."

Daniel trails his father into the kitchen and they both pause before the refrigerator.  Spike ruminates over what _ojets d'art_ to replace without hurting his son's feelings.  He finally settles on last year's masterwork, a drawing of a curiously skinny Santa Claus about to slide down a chimney.  "Here.  We'll take this one down now and put it back up at Christmastime."  As he plucks the blue letter A magnet from the top of the drawing, a small piece of paper that is decidedly not one of Daniel's drawings flutters to the floor.  He bends to retrieve it and then can barely believe what he's seeing.

On a 3" x 5" index card is typed this tersely-worded message:

As of January 1, your rent will increase by $100 dollars a month.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the management of Sunnydale Heights.

Buffy walks into the kitchen, arms akimbo, a tired smile on her face.  "So, did we find a place for…"  She sees what Spike is holding and promptly stops midway through the kitchen.  She feels the sting of a flush building on her face as she knows she has been found out.  Quickly she dismisses Daniel, as the electricity of Spike's anger begins to fill the room like the coming of a sudden thunderstorm on a July afternoon.  "Daniel, why don't you go change out of your shirt so Mommy can wash it for you.  I think I saw a ketchup stain on it from your lunch.  I don't want something like that to set."

"OK, Mommy," he says, dashing off to his room.

"And put on something warm.  It's chilly in here today."

"OK, Mommy," he answers as he skips down the hall.

Finding herself alone with her husband, Buffy rubs a hand up and down her arm as he keeps her in his stare.

"When were you going to tell me about this?" he says in a silky hiss.  

"I'm sorry.  It just slipped my mind.  That's all," she answers feebly.  

"You've been paying an extra one hundred dollars a month for this glorified locker of a flat and you haven't bothered to tell me?"

"But see?  That's why I think we could swing a house payment.  I'm already paying through the nose just to rent a place to live.  I don't see why it would be any different handling a house payment."

"But Buffy?  A hundred dollars extra for a place that is cold as Mars during the fall and winter and hot as hell during the spring and summer?"

"I've managed.  I've had to make some cuts here and there, but we've gotten through.  Besides, honey, there wasn't really anything you could do about it.  You were taking care of Daniel full time then.  I needed you to be at home.  I wouldn't even have thought about you working outside the house."

Buffy doesn't know why she has said this and as Spike's eyes widen and the veins in his neck become engorged with blood, she knows that was so not the right thing to say.  

"Oh, I get it!  What _could _I have done?  Is that what you think of me?  That I'm some sort of fucking June Cleaver in a pearl necklace who's only good for cutting the crusts off sandwiches and keeping the house tidy?"

"Spike, watch your language!"

"Don't you fucking tell me what to do!  Oh.  I forgot.  That's all _you're_ good for."

Buffy gapes at her husband and is about to sound off her own furious reply when Daniel comes into the room with half of his sweater on, one sleeve dangling like an elephant's trunk.

"Mommy and Daddy look!  I'm missing an arm!" he says, turning about wildly trying to find the missing sleeve.

"Fine.  Then we'll put you on tour with Def Leppard," Spike bites out.

Daniel eyes his parents with a newly piqued curiosity.   He sees their folded arms and their fuming faces.  He looks to his mother, who won't look at him, and then to his father, who can't seem to look at anyone.

"Are you fighting?" he asks timidly.

Buffy turns to her son and then crosses the room to him to straighten his sweater.  "No, sweetie.  We're having a discussion.  That's all."

"It sure sounds like fighting," he says, once his sweater has been righted and all limbs are present and accounted for.

"We just have something we need to talk about.  Why don't you go into your room and have some quiet time."

"Can I watch TV?" he asks.

"Yeah.  If you want to."

Buffy knows her young son must know something is wrong now.  She only allows him two hours of TV after dinner, never before and rarely in his room, unless one of his parents is there with him to watch.  

"Can Daddy come read to me?" he asks.

"Not right now, Daniel," his father says.

"Then can you watch TV with me?" he tries again.

"Daniel, your Mummy and I are talking right now."

"No you're not.  You're fighting.  And I don't want you to fight."

"Dammit, Daniel, just shut up and go to your room!" Spike explodes.  "Can you just do as your told for once?"

The tears come quickly and soundlessly at first, but then a sob rushes from his lips.  "Oh, Daddy!"  And he turns and flies down the hall to his room.

Buffy heatedly sighs and she passes her hand through her hair in frustrated strokes.  "Now look what you've done."

Spike closes his eyes and tries to let his anger pass.  And when it begins to leave him, left in its wake is the fleeting memory of his child crying because of something he has said.  Not only was it hurtful, it was also just plain false.  For all their faults as parents, they have truly raised an obedient child, one who may question why he is being disciplined, but one who will ultimately comply with his parents wishes, always.

"Christ," Spike mutters as he hammers his fists on the Formica countertop.  A million ways to say he's sorry flood his mind as Buffy's caress flits tenuously on his arm.  

"We'd better go to him," his wife says.  

"I know," he says, hanging his head down as the pounding anger in his head abates and more and more regret heaps up.

"Spike, you know I think of you as a partner in every way."

"I know."

"And you're a good father.  I can't believe how you've taken to parenthood."

Spike shrugs.  "Comes from being with a woman who played with dolls for a century, I suppose."

"More than that.  It comes from the heart.  You've always had such a great heart, Spike.  Even when you were evil, you had a heart, I think," she says, smoothing a hand through her husband's unruly curls…so much like her son's.  

Spike nods, feeling a stabbing in his heart from the memory of his son's tears spilling onto his face.  No soul, yet he feels.  No soul, yet he loves.  No soul.  He's an anomaly, to be sure, but a tortured anomaly.

"I can't believe I said that to him," Spike says.

"Make your apologies."

He does.  And Daniel understands.  Mommy and Daddy were having a discussion and Daniel shouldn't have come in on it.  He may remember that lesson or he won't.  Odds are he won't, but it doesn't matter this afternoon when Mommy and Daddy are on his bed laughing with him at old _Scooby Doo _cartoons and Mommy announces that they all will see the new live action movie on Friday.

One Monday afternoon, Daniel brought home a note from school saying that one child in his class had come down with the chicken pox.  And then one Wednesday morning, Daniel comes home early from school because another child has come down with the chicken pox, and this time the child is Daniel.

            Spike immediately goes into caregiver mode when his son arrives at the apartment.  He turns Daniel's chin from side to side, finding that there are only two pinkish welts marring his son's face and his skin is hot to the touch.

            "Not feeling well, are we?" Spike asks as he tugs the windbreaker from his son's arms.

            "I feel OK," Daniel replies.  "Except I missed recess!"

            Spike smiles.  "Don't worry.  You're going to be in recess until you get better."

            "But I feel OK, Daddy.  I don't feel sniffly or shirty."

            Buffy rolls her eyes.  "Shirty.  Great word you've introduced to our son."

            "What?  It's better than shitty," Spike defends.

            "Shitty," Daniel giggles.  "Shitty."

            "Oh, great.  Great, great, great," Buffy mutters, throwing her hands up in the air.  "Look, I'm going back to the Y.  Yolanda took over my class this morning.  I've got to go before she has them unlearning what they have learned."

            "What do I give him?"  Spike asks.

            "This," Buffy says, pushing a bottle of calamine lotion into her husband's hand.  "On all the pox.  They're going to start appearing like Adam Sandler movies on TBS very shortly.  I gotta go.  Bye, Daniel.  Mommy loves you."  She presses a kiss on her son's as yet unaffected forehead and then leaves the apartment.  

            About this time, Daniel scratches at his chest.  Spike knows the pox is spreading very quickly.

            "Come on.  Let's get you into some pajamas and into a warm bed," Spike says, taking his son by the hand.

            "I don't feel sick, Daddy.  Why do I have to go to bed?  Can't I watch TV with you in the big room?"

            "We can watch TV together in your room."  Bed rest, force fluids, give him plenty of chicken soup, is what Spike is thinking.  Spike is actually a little excited that his son is home during the day.  Days are lonely in the apartment with both Buffy and Daniel gone.  He will have to censor his usual TV habits (Daniel is NOT to be subjected to the evils of Regis and Kelly until he's old enough to understand why such entities exist), but it seems some quality time is close at hand.

            Spike undresses his son and leaves him standing naked in the middle of his room while he searches for clean pajamas in the hamper of clothing that hasn't been put way yet.  Among Buffy's thongs and Spike's graying black tee shirts, Spike finds the Spider-Man PJ's that Daniel waits for every time the timer goes off on the dryer.  

            As he's pulling the pajama top over his son's head, Daniel says, "I'm serious, Daddy.  I don't feel sick.  I want to play Wizard!"

            Wizard is a role-playing game that father and son have developed in the wake of Daniel's Harry Potter fascination.  It basically entails Spike speaking in an Obi-Wan-type voice, saying things to Daniel like, "You are a wizard.  And you should act accordingly" and Daniel waving a chopstick over furniture, shouting, "Kazaa!".

            "If you're up to it." 

            "Can we go to the park later?  When it's dark?"

            "No, son.  You're homebound until those little dots get crusty."

            Daniel sticks his bottom lip out on protest as Spike finishes dressing him.  After he is fully clothed and under his covers, Daniel says, "Daddy?"

            "Yes, Daniel?"

            "I think this chicken pox thing is going to suck."

            Spike has to chuckle at this.  "Daddy will do all he can to make it bearable."

At 12:30 in the afternoon, more welts have appeared on Daniel's face, and some others are hidden under his pajama top as he rubs his chest.  Spike is bringing a tray full of nourishing orange juice and chicken and stars into Daniel's room.

            Daniel eyes his lunch with disgust.  "I don't want it."

            "Oh, come on, Daniel.  It's chicken and stars.  You love chicken and stars," Spike says, running a spoon through the steaming brew of processed meat and pasta he slaved over for at least three minutes and a half.  

            Daniel pulls his covers up over his mouth.  "But won't it make more?"

            "More _what_?"

            "More pox!"

            "Daniel, you didn't get chicken pox from chickens.  Is that what you think?"

            "Jesse said you get chicken pox from chickens."

            "Oh, and Jesse is the authority on diseases.  He can't even spell his full name.  Don't you mind him.  Here."  Spike scoops up a generous helping of soup into the spoon and blows on it until he's sure it won't burn his son's tongue.  "Take a sip."

            "Did you make it special?"

Spike always adds a crumpling of Wheatabix to his son's chicken and stars. That's what Daniel means by making the soup special.  "Yes sir.  It's special."

Daniel puts his lips tentatively on the edge of the spoon and takes a swift sample of the soup. 

Before long, Daniel is taking the soup like a man, feeding himself, remarking that this is the most special soup he has ever had.  Father and son spend the rest of the afternoon watching PBS, because Buffy always stresses that if Daniel is home sick, he should be learning something.  Right before Buffy comes home, Spike puts in the DVD of _Old School_ and they watch the scenes that make them laugh the most.

With PBS restored, and Daniel's body now awash in angry welts, Buffy comes home just in time to hear the neediness in her son's tone.  Sick time means Mommy time when she is home and for the rest of the day Daniel is Buffy's baby again.  Only when Daniel finds her reading of _Pooh_ substandard does Daniel call on Spike, who reads a chapter to him and saves the day.

Late into the night of the second day of the pox, Buffy awakes to her son's presence in her bed.  He doesn't ask if he can come in, he just does.  And Buffy doesn't scold him.  He is suffering.  He has been told not to scratch and he wants to so badly that his only request at this time is, "Mommy, will you rub my back?"

"Sure, sweetie," Buffy says, trying to be awake.  She runs her fingers over the thin cotton of her son's pajamas, careful not to make her gestures resemble scratching.  "Go get the calamine," Buffy instructs Spike, who is now awake as well.  

Once the bottle is retrieved, Buffy lights the lamp beside the bed and begins to massage the pink lotion onto her son's itchy skin.

"They itch so bad," Daniel says, nearly hissing as the cool lotion meets his inflamed skin.

"Now, don't scratch them, sweetie," Buffy admonishes again.

"Yeah, I know.  If I scratch, I'll be a mutant like Xander."

Buffy doesn't have to ask who told him that.  Spike is cowering under the sheets, almost in the same manner his son employed trying to avoid more pox by chicken and stars.  

Finding himself under his wife's scrutiny, Spike says, "What?"

"A mutant like Xander?" Buffy quotes.

"Hey, it was all I had to go on.  I had to say something to make him stop scratching!"

Daniel yawns and says, "Why do you sleep naked, Daddy?"

            "Because, unlike you, I don't have any pajamas."  Spike says.  

            "Mommy and I could buy you some.  For Christmas."

            Spike smiles and stokes his son's cheek.  "Don't bother.  I don't like pajamas.  I prefer to sleep _au naturel_."  
            "What's oh---

            "Au naturel.  Naked.  How I sleep."  He could add that he has waited so long to sleep next to Buffy that he wants to absorb every moment of his time with her in bed through his pores, but that explanation would baffle his young son.  Spike would have to get into the whole thing about how Buffy hated him for a long time and he hated her, and when he loved her, she still hated him.  Daniel likes to believe that his parents loved each other from the time they met and that's the story they're sticking to.

            "I don't want to wear pajamas either," Daniel announces, pulling off his pajama top.

            "No sir! This stays on!"  Buffy tells her son.

            "But if Daddy doesn't wear pajamas, I won't either!" 

Spike has been aware, since Daniel came into his own being, that his son wants to replicate everything about Spike.  Spike took to fake urinating to show his son how to pee into the toilet (vampires do not have to relieve their bladders or their bowels; everything they intake becomes a part of who they are, which makes them even more the victim of the saying, you are what you eat.)  Spike remembers how Daniel dangled his tiny penis over the blue-tinted water of the toilet and amazed himself at peeing right into it, turning the water green.  Daniel likes to talk like him as well.  He says bloody, not in relation to something that is full of blood, and he says hell, since hell always seems to follow Spike's "bloody's".  Daniel thinks that his father hung the moon.  This frightens Spike sometimes.  Daniel is a human boy, that much he and Buffy know.  He has a beating heart, his blood is warm, and he bathes in the sun, albeit with heavy applications of sunblock lotion.  But sometimes the strength Spike feels in the grip of his son's hand worries him.  It seems much stronger than that of a boy not born to a vampire and a Slayer.  He wonders how much of himself is in his son and if the undesirable parts of himself have found their way into his little boy.  Will he one day be too much like me? Spike wonders.

            For now, Spike's immediate concern is keeping his son in his pajamas.  

             "You're sick, Daniel.  You need to keep warm," Spike says, persistent in his quest to keep Daniel a mini-Spider-man.     

"How do you keep warm?" Daniel asks. 

            "I've got your Mummy," Spike answers, smiling over at his tired wife.  He is reveling in the memory of a recent blood-letting in which Buffy allowed him to nurse from her breast and he took just a little.  She does this once in a blue moon, letting him pierce the delicate skin of her nipple and sip at her warm blood.  But she makes him warm in so many other ways.  Sometimes, when she's making herself up in the morning, she looks so hot to him in her distressed pink robe he could take her right at her vanity.  And then sometimes she comes home at the end of a hard day and simply slumps into his arms and says, "I missed you today."  And then sometimes she just smiles back at him lazily in the dark, and he blazes like a roman candle.

            "Is Mommy making you warm now?" Daniel asks.

            Spike just grins more and finds Buffy's hand in the darkness.  "Your Mummy makes me warm all the time.  All I have to do is think about her."

            Late one afternoon, the phone rings as Spike is picking up Daniel's toys.  

            "Hey," comes Buffy's enthusiastic voice from the other end.

            "Hey yourself," Spike says, cradling the phone between his chin and his shoulder.  

            "How's the half-English patient?"

            "He's all tuckered out right now.  He was playing fine for a while and then he said, 'Daddy, I think I need to lie down,' and he fell asleep on the couch.  He's been out cold for about an hour now."

            "Poor baby," Buffy remarks.  "Any fever still?"

            "Are you kidding?  He's so full of Motrin right now, a fever doesn't stand a chance."

            "So what are you doing?"

            "Straightening up.  For a sick kid, he can sure make a lot of mess."

            "Have you had a chance to read the paper yet?"

            "Sorry.  Since you left it's been nothing but, 'Daddy, read to me.  Daddy, play Wizard with me.  Daddy, let's watch about eleven hours of _Spongebob Squarepants_.'"

            "I was just wondering if there were any new houses on the market that might be in our price range."

            For some reason, Spike thought Buffy has forgotten all about finding a new house.  He hasn't heard her speak about it for at least a week.

            "There's a new position opening here at the Y.  Director of Activities.  I think I might apply for it.  More responsibilities, many more hours, but the money is good.  36k a year.  Thing is, a college education is preferred, but I think I've been here long enough to be considered a half shoo-in.  What do you think?"

            "I think you should go for it, love.  Does it seem like something you could do?"

            "Honey, I've averted about a dozen Apocalypses since I was fifteen.  I should be able to handle the daily operations of a Y, don't you think?"

            "Yeah, but what happens when you're in an interview and you say, 'Oh, and six years ago, I prevented a god from unleashing hell on earth.  And then when my husband and I got married, same thing!  No hell on earth!'"

            "That would definitely highlight my managerial skills, attention to detail, and ability to get along with others, don't you think?"

            "You know, I've tried my hand at creating a resume too," Spike says, eyeing the nearly blank piece of paper on the kitchen table with just his name (William S. Hogan, Esquire), his address and telephone number.   "But I'm finding that 'Scourge of Europe' doesn't look as good on paper as I thought it would."

            "Sounds like you could use a little help to juice things up."

            "Yes, please," he sighs.  

            "Well, we'll work on it tonight."

            Spike wonders what there is to work on when he says, "All right."

            By the following Monday, Daniel's pox are nice and crusty and his fever is gone and he is too relieved to be dressed for school and not for another day in bed.

            "Ooh, look at that!" Daniel says, flaking off a scab from a pock on his chest as Buffy tries to dress him.

            "Sweetie, don't do that!  That's disgusting!"

            "But it's so fun!" Daniel says, finding another pock that's ripe for picking,

            "Don't do it!  Please!  Mommy doesn't want to receive a note from the principal saying you've been suspended from school for grossing out other students."

            "That won't happen. Jesse picked his scabs for a while and passed them around.  And they were bloody bloody."

            "Don't pick.  That's it," Buffy warns for a final time.  

Daniel is dressed.  His lunch is packed.  It's as though he is going to school for the first time.  And no one feels this more than Spike.

He is by the door, biting his thumb, pacing back and forth.  "His fever?" he asks his wife.

"Gone," Buffy says, slipping a warm woolen cap over her son's head as an added defense against the increasingly cooler weather outside.  

"And the welts?"

"All crusty."

"Really, I thought I saw one that was---

"Honey, he's ready to go back.  I know you hate to lose your best buddy, but he's got to go back to school.  Otherwise, he'll be a moron, like Xander."  Buffy finishes off that statement with a knowing smile.

Spike joins Buffy in her smile and takes her by the hand, kissing her palm.  He then turns to his sweet little boy, all scabbed over and sweaty in his woolen coat, needful in the will-it-be-cold or –won't-it-be-cold weather of October.

"I love you, Daniel.  You know that," Spike tells his son.

Daniel responds with a hug and a grin before dashing out of the apartment for adventures with friends at school he has been missing.

"Wait, Daniel!"  Buffy shouts out into the hall.  After she has successfully halted her son from dashing down the stairs, she turns to Spike.

She takes just a minute to cup his cheek with her hand and kiss him.  She strokes a thumb along his prominent jaw and draws his face to hers again, kissing him more deeply this time.  These are the kinds of kisses reserved for late night embraces under the covers when they think Daniel is fast asleep.  Spike never would expect such a kiss in broad daylight, with their son hellicoptering up and down the hall, anxious to go to school.

In about the time it takes a teacher to let a class out for recess, Buffy finally breaks the kiss and fingers the white scar on her husband's brow.  

"Every day, I have no idea how I would make it without you.  I love you more than anything in the world," she says to him.

For all the times he has spoken extemporaneously from his dead heart and has exposed the poet's soul that was taken away from him so many years ago, Spike finds himself unable to speak.  He can only nod, tears thick in the back of his throat.  So often he still thinks of himself as the creature crouched under her window smoking cigarettes in the darkness.  When she pulls him to her and lets him know that he is truly hers, he feels as though his alleyway encounter with a vampire years ago was just a dream and he is a man, a man in full.  

Spike sits in the lonely space of the apartment.   The only noises are coming from the hum of the fridge and the Spanish radio station blaring in the apartment below.  He stares at the TV, almost willing it to come on, but it doesn't.  He goes over to the resume that he and his wife have worked on.  He looks at the last job listed.  

Initiative Project.  Classified.  

Spike looks at that line and feels dizzy, snared by memories of helplessness and experimentation.  For so long he has put off the pain that the chip has directed him to feel when he hurts a human being.

But he can't put off the pain of loneliness as his son's presence drains from the apartment and he is left alone.  And he cries when he finally switches on the TV and watches a pasty-faced man on TV pass a shoe into his hand, saying, "One, two!"


	5. Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

            On a Thursday night shortly after sunset, there is a flurry of activity in the Hogan-Summers apartment at a time when the husband and wife of the household usually are hunkering down over their musty books researching at the kitchen table with their child tracing letters on Xeroxed sheets with fat pencils.  The resumes Spike has submitted have garnered three interviews and he is going out on all of them tonight, in one fell swoop.  

            "My hair's not right, is it?" Spike asks peevishly before the mirror that is his wife, begging her to translate his reflection.  

            "It looks fine, honey.  Just fine," Buffy says encouragingly as she mists the top of his hair with a squirt of her favorite spray gel.  "Just stop fussing with it!"

            He grimaces.  "Sometimes I think I should just go back to the old way.  Peroxided, slicked back.  I had a whole routine.  I just had to make three clean swipes with my hand and it would be perfectly in place.  Now that it's all wild, I don't know how it looks."

            "Amazingly sexy," Buffy comments, running her fingers through the stiffened locks.

            "I don't know if I want to look amazingly sexy for these interviews.  If I were going to New York to become a stud, sure, but since I'm going out to the Sunnydale Shipyards, the Hampton Inn and the Elysian Fields Mortuary…"

            "Button up a few of these buttons," Buffy suggests, noticing his blue shirt is gaping at gigolo level.

            And he does.  And the result is apparently professional magic.  In his crisp blue button down and gray pants he almost looks like someone who could join the ranks of the working class and still have some class.  But there's only so much Spike can do to disguise the fact that he is a hottie.  

            But still, Spike is unsure.

            "Sweetheart, these trousers seem a bit more snug than the last time I wore them."  He lifts his shirt and punches at the slight doughy roll just under his navel.  "I'm getting fat, aren't I?"

            "Oh no, honey.  You look fine.  Believe me."

            "But this.  This wasn't here before," he says, continuing to punch at his abs.  "I'm too young for middle age spread!  I'm just over 130, you know!"

            "Oh, will you stop it!"

            "It's those bloody blooming onions at Outback.  I need to cut those out.  They're all ending up here.  God, I look like a bloody truck driver."

            "Ooooh, breaker breaker 1-9, what's your handle?" Buffy says, pinching his sides.

            "Honestly, I don't know why you sleep with me anymore."

            "Because," Buffy says, pulling him close, "You're so hot, I would kick you out of bed just to fuck you on the floor."

Buffy is speaking in that sizzling rasp that makes Spike instantly hard.  He takes her in his arms.  "That good, eh?"

"That good," she says, kissing him on the lips and tingling at the squeeze he delivers on her ass.   

That's what he will always find exciting and surprising about his young wife.  They are always in tune with each other's arousal.  Even now, as old marrieds, they bicker as two people do when living together in a legally recognized union, but they are always aware of their need for each other.  Buffy is the most sexual creature, human or otherwise, Spike has ever been with.  He often thinks that her willingness to please comes from her shaky start in her acquaintance with the realm of physical love in which her first lover told her she had a lot to learn.  But he also likes to think she didn't get it right until she found the person to get it right with.  Sometimes when he touches her between her legs and finds her warm and damp, he swears she stays that way for him.  

But some sense does prevail.  She breaks the kiss at its most heated and positions his wandering hands by his sides and not hers.  

"Honey, you have to go out there.  You've got a job to do.  And you know what we say when there's a job to do."

"Right," he says, in a breathlessness he's not supposed to have.  "Get it done."

She nods and smiles, exposing the full range of her shiny white teeth.  "Get it done."

But he does fuck her before he leaves.

He finds himself first at the Hampton Inn.  Having driven up to the stucco box on the side of the highway, he meets a man who could have come from a box himself.  And if the box came from a shelf in a store, there would be a warning label saying, "May cause extreme drowsiness.  Do not operate heavy machinery while encountering this person."

The man is friendly enough, exchanging what could rate as _bons mots_ in some alternative universe in which humor exists only as an anomaly.  "Is it hot enough for ya?" he asks, since this October has proven quite mild.  Spike surmises that this man also turns asshole at birthday parties and attempts to sing the descant in "Happy Birthday."  When you try the harmony in _Happy Birthday_ you harmonize with losers who wish they were in a singing group and on stage and not at someone's birthday party.

"Well, this job requires you to stay awake," the man says, folding his hands against his girth and leaning heavily against the back of his faux leather chair.  

Spike leans back against his own chair, still self conscious about his own "girth".  "Oh, I can stay awake."

"11 to 7.  It's quite a shift.  You have all the crazies, all the morons thinking they can talk you out of full price for a room.  And you have to put out breakfast."

"Do I have to cook anything?"

"No.  You just have to put out some Danish.  Donuts.  Brew some coffee.  That's about it."

"That I can do.  I have a little boy.  All I have to do is pour him some cereal and that's breakfast."

The man nods.  "Basically, I'm looking for a warm body to stay here at night, close out the accounts for the day and feed our guests.  Do you think you can do that?"

"I don't see why not."  Although he knows he can't meet the criteria for the warm body requirement. 

"And it's all the free HBO you can watch in the lobby."

"Oh, well that's a plus, isn't it?"  Already he's got his cap set on many after hours Mickey Rourke film fests to come right in the hotel lobby.

"But I can't understand why you're applying for this position.  Your resume is quite impressive.  I see you have some experience in the legal profession?"

"I have?"

"It says here you worked for a judge."

"Oh, right.  The Judge.  Awful job, that.  I swear he was bent on destroying the world.  I didn't want any part of it."

The manager notes this with a thoughtful incisor against his bottom lip.  "Who isn't in this town?"

Apparently one of the Weekly World News headlines about the goings-on in Sunnydale has converted a believer.  All Spike can do is nod and smile.  

The next interview is noisy and barely intelligible.  Spike strides by a hulk of steel and bolts that will one day be a nearly indestructible vessel at sea, the shipyard supervisor assures him.

Above the din of riveting and welding, Spike thinks he can hear the supervisor say, "Working third shift---you have to mind the munchkins."

"Munchkins?"

"Yes.  And sometimes there are mighty mice a floating."

Spike is certain he is hearing everything wrong.  So far all he knows about the job is that he can expect diminutive characters from the _Wizard of Oz_ and strong rodents treading water.  Living as a human has severely damaged his vampiric hearing, he thinks.  At last there is enough of a break in the assembly so that Spike can ask a question and hear the answer.  

"Is it strictly a night job?" 

"Third shift.  Only third shift.  Hardest shift to staff," the supervisor replies.

"Is any of it outside?"

"No.  All inside.  Inside."

Spike looks up at the windows, gauging how the sunlight might fall on him in the early morning hours if he were working one of these shifts.  Even so, it all looks like hell to him.  Sweaty, mundane boring business.  He'd be better off clipping Ernest Borgnine's toenails for the rest of eternity.

Finally there is a blast of an air horn overhead and automatically, the men working on the ship turn off their tools, flip off their welding hats and disperse.  

"Ah, the break.  Dinnertime here at the shipyards," the supervisor explains.

Great, maybe I can find out more about the Munchkins, Spike thinks.

"I saw on your resume that you have some experience in welding.  You worked for someone named Jim Amarra?"

"Yes.  Jim Amarra Tunneling."

"You know, I've lived in Sunnydale a number of years, but I've never heard of that company."

"It was an ill-advised venture that only lasted a few days."

"What were you tunneling?"

"Well," Spike begins.  "Tunnels, mostly.  The mission was never really defined.  That was a problem from day one and doomed the business on day two when it ended.  We caused the collapse of a major freeway.  Something we're not proud of, but it happened."  Actually, at the time Spike was quite proud.  Putting a snag in rush hour on that day was something he patted himself on the back for when he was immobilized by the chip and couldn't do any evil other than turning the Scoobies against each other, which couldn't be done, it turned out.  Buffy's army wasn't as backbiting, or neck biting as his was and he should have known better.

"I noticed also that you haven't worked in the past five years.  Is there a reason?"

"Oh, yeah.  I have a son.  I've been staying at home with him, but now he's in school."

"So you were a stay at home Dad?"

"That I was.  My wife and I are looking to buy a house.  Sort of need a second income to do that."

"Well, I wish you all the luck in the world."

With that comment, Spike surmises he is no a shoo-in for this job.

At the first rap of his knuckles against the front door of the Elysian Fields Mortuary, Spike feels a chill.  And it takes a lot for a vampire to feel a chill.

He is greeted by a man whose face he has seen before.  The garish visage of the ever-smiling greeter reminds him of the skeletal Gentlemen who stole hearts and voices from the populace of Sunnydale almost a decade ago.  But his touch is not cold.  He is among the realm of the living, but works in the land of the dead.  Funeral directors always have that embalmed-like creepiness that comes from making a living from preserving the dead. 

"This is a very simple job," the man says.  "It only requires you to be here at night to receive our clients.  As you may know, Sunnydale has the highest death rate per capita in the U.S.  And three-fourths of the deaths occur at night."

"I'm aware of that," Spike answers as they make their way into the great white foyer of the funeral home with its pressboard wood furniture, demurred lighting and not lived in feeling.  

"We are staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  And business is booming."

Spike can only shake his head, wondering what Buffy and he have been doing wrong.  They're on the job 24-7 and they slay until their knuckles are raw, but what more can they do?

"You would be in charge of receiving the dead, and seeing that they are shelved and tagged properly until the morticians can attend to them.  That wouldn't bother you, would it?"

"Oh, no.  Not at all.  I've had some experience with the dead.  I lived in a crypt for a while before I took to shacking up with the little lady."

"Really?  You lived in a crypt?" the man bristles.

Spike is still inserting bits and pieces of his past life which are completely acceptable to vamps like himself, but completely unacceptable to those who are not undead.  His wife is constantly nagging him to work on his shoot first and ask questions later responses, but he has a long way to go.

"I was…homeless, you see.  I didn't have a job for a while.  I had to live wherever the rent was cheap and it's dirt-cheap in a crypt.  And you don't have to deal with a roommate's idiosyncrasies because they all died with him and marble is so much classier than cardboard, isn't it?"  

"I suppose so," the man smiles cordially with discomfort still lodged odd stare.   "That often happens to our men in fatigues."

"In fatigues?"

"You said in your resume that you were in the military.  Something about involuntary service in 1999."

"Oh, that.  Well, I was sort of a guinea pig for the government.  They tried something on me that didn't exactly work and I'm not authorized to speak about it.  Classified, you know.  I'd have to kill you if I told you about it and I don't kill humans anymore."

At this time a bell rings.  The man jerks his head to one side as a dog would hearing a siren and claps his hands.  "Oh.  You will get to see some of the work you'll be doing right now.  We've just had an arrival."

The man leads him to a side door where a gleaming beige hearse awaits them.  The driver gets out and goes to the back of the car as though to retrieve a trunk full of groceries.

"DOA," the driver says.  "Found in the alleyway outside the Bronze.  Been dead at least a day.  A girl.  Fifteen or so."

The man wheels out the gurney on which sits a human-sized black bag.  The bag jiggles like black Jello as the gurney is rolled over the pavement and is delivered into the parlor.  The driver then excuses himself, saying there's another that's been discovered on Elm, also DOA.  

"It's a really sad job, working here.  Especially when there are young people to process.  You see some people so young, with such promise.  And there's nothing we can do for them except give them a peaceful expression in repose."

They are in a room now, all white with steel tables, all adorned with clients draped in white sheets, festively garlanded with dangling toe tags.  The man enlists Spike's help in lifting the girl's body from the gurney to the table and Spike is surprised how light she is, but how heavy she seems when she is placed on the table as though they are unloading a bag of bowling balls.  

The man undoes the zipper of the body bag roughly, like he's opening a bag of sweets and salivating for its contents.  

            Inside is a very young girl, not nearly an adult and never will be at this point.  Though rigor mortis has played havoc with her features, and she looks purple as a plum, she is sweet in her death, looking as though she just fell asleep on some ink.  Her lips are drawing back and she is showing her white, unstained teeth.

            But above all, Spike notices the blemish on her neck.  It is the only imperfection on her.

            "You get a lot of these neck jobs?"  Spike asks.  

"I beg your pardon?" the man says.  

"Come on.  A good lot of the stiffs who come in here are dead of neck trauma.  I'm almost certain."

The man acts as though he doesn't know what the hell Spike is talking about.  "We have had cases where the victim has incurred certain wounds about the neck that resemble dog bites, such as this, but---

"Don't play Jessica Simpson with me!  You know this is a vampire town!  If you don't know that, you're extremely behind the times.  Or too willing to charge the grieving for embalming fees when cremation is so much cheaper."

The man's already rigid lips stiffen.  "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah?  But I do.  Don't ask me how I know, but I do."

 The man gives him that smarmy expression that makes him think he's at a Tony Orlando concert in Branson, Missouri and he is doomed.

He won't get this job either.

Back in the apartment, Spike finds his son dressed only in his underwear and the red cape his wife wore many years ago as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween.  He never saw her in it, but he has seen it in their closet and has wondered in what erotic setting it might turn up.  He never imagined his son would be wearing it.

Buffy is running a sponge along the countertop in the kitchen, shaking her head defiantly.  "N-O, no!"

"Oh, Mommy, please?"  Daniel asks.

"No, Daniel.  Don't ask me again.  That's it.  Live with it!" she says, squeezing the sponge into the sink.

"What's he on about tonight?" Spike asks, planting a kiss on his wife's forehead.  

"Oh, he wants to be Captain Underpants for Halloween and I won't let him.  So I'm a mean, mean Mommy."

"Look, Daddy!  I'm Captain Underpants!  I'm a super hero!" Daniel says, flexing his slight muscles and striking an appropriate super hero pose.

"Has the super hero had his bath?"  Spike asks his wife.

"No.  Super heroes don't take baths, he told me.  And they don't pick up their toys or go to bed on time.  So by his definition, he's overqualified."

"I'm a super hero, Daddy!  A super hero!" Daniel proclaims as he races around the kitchen.

"So does your super strength involve the power of your stink?  You make people sick because you smell so bad because you need a bath?"

"No.  I'm strong.  Real strong."

"Even super heroes need some tubby time every once in a while," Spike says, catching his son in a fly-by.  He lifts him up, on one arm, letting Daniel know what super strength really is.  "I think it's time for you to go into the living room and pick up your toys, don't you think?" he asks as he is basically bench-pressing his son.

Daniel is giggling now.  "Super heroes don't have toys."

"Oh yeah?"  Spike says, tickling his son on the ribs.  "Then maybe we should return all those toys in the living room to their rightful owner since the super hero here doesn't claim them."

"No, they're mine!" Daniel says in ticklish glee.

"But I thought you said super heroes don't have toys."

"They're my toys, Daddy!" 

"OK," Spike says, dropping Daniel gently to the floor, making sure he lands on his feet.  "Go tidy them up.  Put them all in the toy bin.  And then get into the tub.  It's late and you have school tomorrow."

Daniel is studying his father with an especially pensive glare.  "Are you a super hero, Daddy?" he asks.

Spike looks over at his wife and sees her staring back at him with admiring eyes.  She nods to herself as she continues to sponge the countertop in the kitchen.

"Yeah," he tells his son as he smiles at all the meaning of his wife's thousand-watt gleam.  "I think I am."


	6. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

            On Halloween night Spike and his young son make their way in fast clips down a tree-shaded street in what Buffy has deemed a "safe neighborhood", i.e. her old turf, Revello Drive and its environs.  They stopped at a few apartments in the complex and were given the snot candy (Dum-Dum suckers, starlight mints and some sort of imported Mexican candy that smelled of oil and body odor which Spike tossed into the nearest trash bin).  Now they've hit a gold mine.  Fun Size Snickers, Hershey Miniatures, full-size Butterfingers from one gated house.  At the end of his Hallmark-sanctioned begging, Daniel's grocery bag is dragging the ground.  

            "You having fun, Daniel?" Spike asks when he notices his son his suddenly very quiet.

            "Yeah," replies Daniel after swallowing something.

            "Hey, wait up a bit, Daniel.  Are you eating your candy?"

            "No," Daniel answers.

            "Come off it, Daniel!  I can smell the masticated caramel."

            "Daddy, what's masti-

            "Means you're lying to me.  You ARE eating your candy!  You know Mummy wants to look through it before you eat it.  There are a lot of crazies out there.  Some who may want to hurt you for no good reason.  Now spit it out."

            "But I've already swallowed it, Daddy!"

            "Fine.  Good.  Just don't eat anymore.  Until we get to Bev's house."

            "Wwy  won't."

            "Daniel, you're eating something else!"

            "It's one of the good ones.  I know, Daddy."

            Spike looks down at his son.  The streetlight is hitting his innocent little face and with his lips rimmed in the verboten chocolate, he looks like a clown.  He's probably been sneaking treats the whole night.  Spike has to take a moment to damn himself as a father, but he also has to give props to his son.  He's good at the stealth, which may aid him in days to come.  But Spike doesn't want to think of days to come.  Right now his son is five years old and enjoying the first Halloween he will remember when he's much older and rebelling fiercely.  And tonight in his cape (Buffy's Little Red Riding Hood cape dipped in black dye) and his natural curly blond locks tamed back and stretched over his skull like a raked over wheat field, Daniel is not only the image of the character he is meant to portray, Malfoy, but also of his father in a younger day.

"Well, at least give me some candy," Spike says.

            "What do you want?" Daniel asks, digging through his take.

            "Do you have any Three Musketeers?"

            Daniel draws a blank.  "You look, Daddy."

            Spike rummages through the gallons of Smarties, candy corns, and Mary Jane's before he finds the coveted candy in miniature form.

            As the unique blend of chocolate, nougat and caramel caresses his taste buds, Spike hums to himself.  "Are there any Krackel bars in there?"

"Are they the red kind?"

"Yeah."

"Uh huh, Daddy.  Lots."

"Better save those for you Mummy.  She has a real jones for them.  On second thought, you'd better give me a handful.  I don't want to have to hear her nattering on about how much chocolate she's been eating and how it's actually making her have hips for once in her life."     

Now they are arriving at the house where Spike always has to take a pause and remember.  He looks up at the gabled windows peering out like skull's eyes warning death, or, even worse, a non-invite.  The house has changed very little, except for the swing on the front porch and the ivory vinyl siding.  The door is the same; it once made Spike an outsider.  Just to see it makes him lonely and scared, thinking he might see Buffy's hateful glare looking out at him from the space between the door and jamb.  Instead there is Bev, the sixty-plus resident of Buffy's former home.  She is resplendent in her gray hair and attempt at a costume.  She is a housewife who has long not been a wife, but she is too tired to search for someone who might make her a wife again.  So tonight she wears her usual elastic pants and big shirt combo and very great smile.  

"Now it's officially Halloween!" Bev declares gleefully.  "I was wondering when you two might show up."  She bends to examine Daniel in his Halloween costume.  "And who are you tonight?"

Daniel has spotted the bowl of goodies on the table inside the door and goes right for it, fisting the candy as fast as his little hands can grab for it.

"Well, you can see he's not dressed as Polite Boy tonight.  He's Malfoy."

"Malfoy?"

"He's a character from the Harry Potter series."

"Oh.  My grandchildren love those books, but I just can't get into them.  I've read a few, but they're not nearly as good as the C.S. Lewis books I read to my kids when they were little.  No matter.  Well, come on in.  I've got some hot cider on the stove."

Spike and Daniel follow Beverly into the kitchen where the aroma of spiced apples and cloves dampens the air.  The kitchen has changed very little as well, except for the "World's Greatest Grandma" apron hanging from the oven and the gingham curtains over the window.  Spike remembers the night he came to this house to apologize for scaring everyone when Dawn went missing and was actually safe and sound in his crypt.  What was that story Buffy's mother was telling him?  He just remembers her laughter and the way she made him feel as though he belonged there.  She may have even said something along the lines of, "Spike!  So good to see you!" which he hadn't heard in a non-sarcastic tone in years.

"So how have you boys been?  Any news?"  Beverly asks, ladling a generous draught of cider into a ceramic mug.

"Well, Daniel's in kindergarten now," Spike says, "And doing really well."

"Oh!  You like school, Daniel?"  Beverly asks.

Daniel is still munching on a Baby Ruth so a hearty nod suffices as a "yes, very much, thank you."

"His old man misses him during the day, though," Spike says, hefting his son into his lap after taking a seat at the bar.  "I've been in job search mode lately."

"Oh, really?"  Beverly hands her guests two mugs of cider.  "How's that going?"

"Haven't heard back from any of them yet.  It's been about two weeks since the interviews."

"You should call them to let them know you're still interested."

Spike grimaces.  "Thing is, I don't think I was interested in any of them, really.  But I do think I should be working.  Buffy was just passed over for a promotion at the Y that she was really counting on.  We're looking into buying a house.  Beverly, could you hit Daniel's mug with a shot of cold water from the tap in Daniel's mug?  It's a little too steamy for him."

Beverly takes the mug and ferries it over to the sink.  "Well, if you're wanting to buy a house, I've got a tip on one that's going to be on the market very soon."  She jets a quick burst of cold water into the mug and returns it to Daniel.    "This one."

"Really?  This house?"

Beverly sits down on one of the bar stools and scoots close to the island.  "When I moved in here six years ago, I thought this would be a great place for my sons and daughters to come on weekends with their children.  But it just didn't pan out that way.  They don't visit unless it's Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Sometimes they scarcely remember to call me on Mother's Day.  This is just too big of a house for myself.  So I'm putting it on the market and moving into a retirement community in San Diego.  That's probably what I should have done in the first place after Arthur died."  She crosses herself and gazes over at the black and white picture of a young man in a naval uniform, circa 1945.

Spike's mind begins spinning.  Buffy's house is for sale!  "So you're really leaving Sunnydale?" he says, a little embarrassed at the unintentional pitch of excitement in his tone.

She nods.  "I really am.  Time to move on.  It's taken me the better part of a decade to decide Sunnydale really isn't for me.  I suppose it's fine if you're young and just starting out, but I don't really have anything keeping me here.  Except a mortgage, which I will be happy to unload."

"Tell me, Bev.  What do you think the value of this place would be in today's market?"  

"Oh, I don't know.  It was listed as $425,000 when I bought it in 2001.  I've made some structural improvements since then.  The foundation was crumbling from all the earthquakes so I had to have it rebuilt three years ago.  I'd say it's worth about $475,000 now.  At least, I hope."

"Damn," Spike says, realizing the impossibility of even making a down payment on a house such as this.  

"Daddy, you said a bad word!" Daniel says, slithering from his father's lap and bounding into the foyer to retrieve more candy from the bowl.  

"Daniel, not too much.  You'll be awake until you're eighteen as it is," Spike says to no avail as his son helps himself to more Snickers bars.

"Oh, let him eat all the candy he wants!  But not you, Spike.  I can see you're getting a little pudgy," she says, clicking her tongue.

Spike is wondering if the ten miniature Krackel bars he devoured on the way to Beverly's house are already showing.  He resolves to give the remaining ones to Buffy and go to the gym seven days a week starting the next day.

 "Daniel doesn't like me talking about getting a job or buying a new house," Spike says.  "I told him that I was trying to get a job so that we could have a better life and he told me that there was nothing wrong with the life we already have.  And then he said that he didn't want me to get a job because his friends' daddies had jobs and his friends didn't see their daddies and he was afraid that if I got a job he wouldn't see me anymore."

"Awww…What a sweet little boy.  He just adores you, you know that."

"I do," Spike says, all smiles.

"When you first came here, what, four years ago?  He was in his little Casper suit and so adorable.  And he was holding so tight to your hand and you had to tell him to say, 'Trick or Treat' and he did.  I thought he was afraid of me."

"No, no.  That's how it was the first time out on Halloween when he was two.  I had to prompt him with the password all night.  He's not shy anymore.  He'll go to anyone, any stranger and strike up a conversation.  Buffy and I have to watch him constantly when we're out in public.  They're a lot of crazies out there, we keep telling him."

"There are more crazies here per capita than any other town, I think.  But it's always nice to have some nice safe company at least once a year," Bev says, tipping her mug to Spike's.

Beverly invited Spike into her home years ago.  He was back from the desert, back from Indian learning and safe from the chip.  He could have easily bitten her, killed her, made her one of his kind.  He did not.  She was playing Frank Sinatra on her old hi-fi that day and they listened to Frank sing "The Summer Wind" and Spike told her all about Buffy and why he had to find her.  The words "love of my life" and "my reason to live" came into play that day and when the tears rolled and Beverly shared her own lost love story, they communed and Bev was safe and Spike was on his way to Sunnydale Heights to find Buffy again.

"Mmmmmrmmmmm!  MMMMMM! RRRMMMM!" is the sound heard from the living room now.

"I'd better take him home before he starts destroying property," Spike says.

"Oh no, don't go.  You just got here!"

"No," Spike says, slurping his hot cider, wiping his mouth, and putting the mug back down on the countertop.  "Daniel doesn't know his limits, but Buffy and I do."

Daniel rushes into the kitchen with a sofa cushion.  "A HA!  I've found you!  Now you are going to die!  'Cause I've got the shield of incredicibitynessfulity and you can't kill me!"

"And we're so afraid," Spike says, putting his hands up in mock arrest.  "I don't remember the shield of incredicibitynessfulity being in Harry Potter."

"ARRR…ARRR!  The shield of incredifiltibulity!" Daniel says, defending himself against his father's nay saying,  

"Oh, so the name of the shield changes when it's put up against a worthy foe."  Spike wrests the cushion from his son's hands.  "Put this back."

"But it's the shield of---

"Put the shield of incredi-whatever it may be back on the sofa of what it was."

"I found it in the land of Freshinay!" Daniel says, reaching for his "shield" from his father's hands.

"I hope that land is ten seconds away from where we are now because that's how long you have to return the shield of incredi-whatever to its native soil.  Starting now."  Spike tosses the cushion back to his son,   "10, 9, 8, 7…"

"But it's my shield!"

"…6, 5, 4, 3…"

"I need my shield!  For evil!"

"2-1!  Put it back or else!"

Daniel doesn't know what that mythical "or else" is because it's never gotten to that point.  Sometimes he thinks he might be brave enough to go beyond the bounds of  "or else" but now is not the time because the veins of his Daddy's neck are showing and he is afraid of the "or else".  The cushion is returned to the sofa and it is time to go.

"We'll see you next year?"  Bev asks hopefully from the door as Spike and Daniel leave.

"If not before then," Spike returns, giving a promising thumbs up.

"Your house is for sale," Spike tells Buffy first thing when he and Daniel get back to the apartment.  

"I don't have a house.  Hence the house-search."  Buffy plops the dusty volume of a book on demon plagues of the 14th century she has been reading into the usual hiding spot in the broiler compartment of the stove, which has never been used for any other purpose other than storing books Daniel shouldn't see and the pans that Buffy never can find a use for.  "Try to keep up, honey," Buffy says petulantly. 

  "Sweetheart," Spike says, putting his hands on her deceptively puny arms.  "Your house.  The house where you first lived in Sunnydale.  The house where you and I first sort of cohabitated, though I don't think you ever made mention of that to anyone for fear of impeachment."

Buffy's eyes fly open wide.  "My house!"

"That's the house I'm talking about!  Now who's the one not trying to keep up?"

Buffy begins flinging her hands as though they are on fire before clasping them together as in prayer.  "Oh my God!  Oh my God!  My house!  But I didn't see it in the classifieds today."

"Bev is moving."

"Bev is moving?"

"To a retirement home." 

"Oh my God!  Do you know how perfect that house would be for us?  With the bedrooms and the space and the not smelling so much like kitty litter?  You and I could have Mom's old room and Daniel could have my old room and Dawn could have her old room when she visits!  Oh, I can't believe that it's on the market!  It would be perfect for us!  I always wanted to get it back!" Buffy says, leaping into Spike's arms.  She braises his cavernous cheek bones with kisses, her legs wrapped around his waist and he wants to stop her, he really wants to stop her, but he hopes with all hope that she will come to realization all by herself which she almost always does.

"Mommy, come look at my candy!"  Daniel asks from the entrance to the kitchen.

Spike can see that realization he was hoping for make quick work at dissolving the elated expression on his wife's face.  She slips from his grasp and finds her footing on the shoddy linoleum floor which will not shine, no matter the promises of Swiffer Wet and Swiffer Wet Jet when Swiffer Wet proved all wet.  The drip of her kitchen faucet sounds like a canon fire and catches her attention as shellfire would.  She is where she is now and it is far removed from Revello Drive and the sanctity of home with Mom and kid Sis and Xander there to fix everything when it broke down.  Mom is gone, kid Sis is in college and Xander moved away years ago.

"It's too much," Buffy says as she takes Daniel's hand and follows him into the living room.

"Well, maybe," Spike says, wishing that Daniel's candy bag contained a winning lottery ticket.

"No, it's too much," Buffy says again as she and Daniel sit on the floor and he empties his grocery bag of goodies.  She digs through it, as an Untouchable in India, sorting through the ashes of cremated remains on the banks of the Ganges, hoping for a gold filling or even better, a gold ring.  "Looks all good.  No pin pricks.  No visible signs of unwrapping except yours, you bad boy!"  She playfully slaps her son's arm, seeing that most of the bag is littered with crumpled wrappers.  "But I don't see any Krackels," Buffy says in dismay as she leans the weight of her posterior on the back of her shoes.

"Daddy has them," Daniel says.

Buffy looks up at her husband with such hope in her eyes, Spike knows she is saying, "I still believe in you and I still believe that you and I will get that house, if not _my_ house."  

Spike smiles down at his wife.  "Yes, I have them."  And he plops the Krackels one by one into Buffy's open palm. 

She opens the first one and covers her tongue with the candy, letting it melt slightly before munching on the crunchy bits and swallowing it, all with a satisfied smile.

The next day, Daniel is surprisingly up before his parents, even after his bedtime came two hours late under the influence of his chocolate overdosing.  Buffy elects to get up first, since Spike was up with him all hours.  Spike snuggles back on his pillow.  Minutes later, Buffy returns to their bedroom.  She is holding the newspaper.  The obituaries.  He doesn't know why she awakened him until she points a finger to a face he doesn't recognize until he reads the text underneath.  

_Beverly York Christian died in her home on October 31._

The folks at the Sunnydale Press are used to late notice obituaries.  They keep the presses open for deaths that occur after other newspapers have shut down for the night.  There are too many deaths after sunset not to.

"You OK?" Buffy asks, passing a hand through her husband's hair.

He shrugs her off.  "Yeah."

"You sure?"

He doesn't know.  He really doesn't know.  Mourning is something unusual to him, at least in his incarnation as a vampire.  When he heard Joyce died he did mourn because she was so nice to him.  Beverly was nice to him as well.  But Joyce was Buffy's mother.  Was he so enamored of Buffy that he grieved for Joyce out of respect for Buffy or did he really think highly enough of her to bring flowers?  Years later, when he was remembering Joyce's search for little marshmallows in her cupboards when he requested them for his cocoa, he had his answer.  Yes, he did mourn her in that he missed her comfort and how she treated him like he wasn't a freak.   And when he and Buffy were married he could almost see Joyce dabbing tears and he missed her then as well, in that he wanted her validation of their vows to each other.  But this morning's death.  It's a hard smack that shock delivers and it's one that comes out of nowhere, like something that's been delivered by a phantom hand that not even the undead can deflect.  So on November 1, All Saint's Day, the demon who masquerades as a human, who lies in the Slayer's bed, doesn't know what to say or think.

"Have you told Daniel?" Spike does manage to ask.

"No, I didn't tell him," Buffy replies.  "Should I?"

"Not now.  I'll tell him later.  After school.  I think that's best."

Buffy squeezes his hand and he feels the fire of their union.  She can pass off the tough stuff to him and he can handle it when she cannot.  She goes and readies her son for school.

When Spike does tell Daniel after school that Beverly has died, Daniel doesn't tear up.  He asks his Daddy if he can go and play at Matthew's house.  Spike knows that Daniel won't miss Bev until the next year when he finds she's no longer living where he used to go see her and strangers are in her place because there's no way on the Hellmouth that his parents could afford to live there.

Three nights later, Buffy and Spike sit on a marble slab in a cemetery.  It's been a slow night.  On Halloween, night creatures lay low and the newly risen are few and far between the nights following.  But there is one, at least one, who will rise.  And now Spike feels compelled to tell Buffy about the day Beverly first let her into her new home on Revello Drive.

"My next meal," Spike says in the hush of the night with dozens and dozens of dazzling stars overhead and a brilliant moon.  "And I wasn't thinking about the leftovers on her stove."

The moon makes her husband appear bluish, he is so pale and the moon is so insistently bright.  Everything he is saying is so clear, as clear as the moonlight on his face.  "You wanted to kill her?" Buffy asks Spike.

He nods.  "I did."

He is expecting revulsion from his mate.  He is constantly anticipating that there will be some part of his past that, once divulged, will disgust her to the point that she won't be able to love him anymore.  She is silent.  She stares out across the graveyard and he can't read her gaze, either peripherally or straight on.

"I know it's a bit strange, even to you, the Slayer.  Or perhaps even more so to you.  I have this entire past of a century of killing and debauchery.  I mean, it's not as though I listened to Journey or played Dungeons and Dragons before I met you.  I was really and truly evil.  I killed without conscience because I had none.  But Buffy, you have to know.  When I made that pledge to you after I came back to you six years ago, when I told you that I wouldn't kill, I meant it.  And I haven't killed.  I have been tempted, but not now.  It's different now.  Sometimes I think there is something guiding me.  And it's not just my love for you, as great as that is.  There's something else.  I feel it.  And I can't name it, can't put my bloody finger on it.  But it's real.  I just have to wonder if, in the process of becoming a father, a husband and a would-be member of the workplace, all the things that humans are, I've grown something that all humans have."  He takes his wife's hand, though her gaze and, seemingly, her thoughts have not moved from the freshly dug grave that is her job tonight.  "A soul."

There's not so much as a sniff from his wife.  Then the hairs raise on her back and she stiffens.  All the times she denounced him as an animal he has reason to call her the same when he sees her zeroing in on her prey.  She rises and then crouches carefully.

"She's coming," Buffy announces.

A bit of earth is being tossed about from clawing hands beneath the dirt.  Spike can see the small stand with the index card with the name of the deceased and the day she died, or the night she died.  He was with this woman the night she died.  Years before, this woman let a vampire into her home and she was safe.  The night she died, she let two vampires into her home.  One called her friend and let her live.  One called her food and killed her.

Spike sees her briefly as a monster.  They are so disoriented when they rise.  It's a new world they arrive in, one in which blood is the first urge.  Bev's premiere thirst for blood is the Slayer's so Bev's unlife is short-lived.  Her torso is exposed, Buffy finds her heart, and Bev is dead again. 

"You wanted to kill her at one time," Buffy says, looking up at her husband, still with that hardness of a predator in her eyes.  She wipes the dust from her clothes.  "Now we're even."


	7. Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN  
Buffy pulls into her usual space at Sunnydale Heights and immediately notices the late model Honda Civic in the third space reserved for their apartment. It's after eight on a Friday night and such a sighting is not unusual at this hour or on this day of the week. By the time she enters her apartment and sees that a bottle of merlot has been uncorked on the kitchen counter and there are sounds of laughter coming from the living room, she comes to the conclusion that the other woman in Spike's life has come for a secret rendezvous.  
Spike has not tried to hide the fact that this woman is second only in his affections for Buffy. They have known each other for almost a decade and Buffy is perfectly fine with their relationship. As a matter of fact, it's comforting for her to know that Spike connects with another human being, as much as he connects with her, with certain limitations.  
She sees the woman curled up on the sofa next to her husband and crosses her arms. The woman's hair is brown and thick and is held back by an elastic band, a reminder of her younger and more childish years that she won't relinquish, though she blew out twenty-one candles on her last birthday cake. Her face is maturing, waning from the full moon of adolescence into something more refined, but still completely youthful. She is enjoying one of the perks of her age, swilling deep red wine from a tumbler usually reserved for milk and orange juice in the morning. Buffy's husband is having the same and the two of them are laughing together there on the sofa. Daniel is there too, providing the entertainment for the evening. It's his usual repertoire of half finished knock-knock jokes and attempts at singing Frere Jacques.  
"Sunny lay matina, sunny lay matina. Din din don. Din din don," Daniel finishes.  
"My son the bi-lingual," Spike comments proudly as he applauds. "Too bad it's French. Never could stand the sodding Frogs. But it's true what they say about Frog legs. They taste just like chicken."  
"You know what he's going to ask now," the woman says, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.  
"Daddy, you eat frog legs?" Daniel asks, true to form.  
"A few times I did. They're a delicacy in France." And he actually has fed from the amphibian and the human kind and they both taste like chicken.  
"What's a delicacy?" Daniel asks.  
"Means something you could just eat up!" the woman says, scooping the little boy from the floor and feigning to be dining on his leg. "Munch munch munch!"  
"Oh, stop. Stop!" the little boy begs through giggles.  
The woman gathers him up in her lap, crossing her arms over his small chest and kissing him on his cheeks. "I've missed you, Little D."  
"I told you not to call him that," Buffy intones. "It'll stick and before you know it we'll all be calling him Little D. And his name is Daniel."  
The woman smiles as she hugs the child tightly. "Hey, big sis."  
"Hey little sis," Buffy says, returning the smile.  
Yes, Dawn is home.  
In the kitchen, with a second bottle of merlot opened and being poured, Buffy lifts her glass for a fill.  
"I didn't expect you until Thanksgiving," Buffy says, taking of sip of the wine, with guilt in her gut. "This wine is supposed to be for Thanksgiving dinner, by the way."  
"Oh, come on, Buffy. I'm legal now. And I need something to cleanse my palate of all the Beast Light I drink at school."  
"Hopefully not too much. That stuff's lethal."  
"Hey, I go to the occasional frat party. And that's all they serve. I go to Discount U, remember? Besides. I didn't have much to do this weekend. Nothing much was going on. Just thought I'd come home and see how you were doing without me." Dawn takes a deep sip of her wine and afterwards her eyes are not only bloodshot, they're sad.  
This tells Buffy that Dawn's most recent boyfriend is now the most recent ex in Dawn's life.  
"Roy didn't work out?" Buffy asks.  
Dawn takes another sip of her wine. "Roy cheated on me."  
"No!" both Spike and Buffy express at the same time.  
"Yeah. He was doing some girl in the north annex of the dorm. But I'm OK with it. I think we were just about done anyway. I mean, I never imagined that I would end up with someone named Roy."  
"Yeah, but at one time you imagined your perfect happiness with someone named Travis," Spike says. "Don't know where you were going with that one."  
"Oh! I saw him on TV! On C-SPAN!"  
"I had no idea C-SPAN aired showcases on poofs," Spike sniffs  
"No, Travis is a Senate page now. Or at least he was during the summer."  
"That bloody wanker. I'll bet he didn't include kidnapper on his resume for that job."  
"He's still really sorry about that." Dawn sees that Buffy and Spike are both looking at her as though she has just admitted to spending a two- day spa treatment with Saddam Hussein. "What, I've just talked to him! Through IM. Nothing else. We haven't seen each other face to face since I was in high school."  
"But you're talking again?" Buffy asks.  
"Travis is Travis. He's not his parents. That's something I have to remember. And that's something you guys have to remember. Travis never would have done what he did if it weren't for his crazy parents. Actually, his mother was the crazy one. His Dad's all right."  
"You Summers women," Spike smirks as he takes a drink of his wine. "So bloody forgiving of your men. Dr. Phil would have a damn field day with you. The co-dependency and all."  
"Spike, I said I was talking to Travis again, not moving in with him or making wedding plans." Dawn steadies her glare at her sister. "Everyone deserves a second chance."  
There is so much Buffy can say in retort. Spike has committed many unforgivable acts, but never to Buffy. Sure, a decade ago he wanted to kill her and sure, he plotted to bring down the Scoobies by turning them against each other at one time, but he never harmed Buffy's family. Buffy can withstand the blows of the creepiest demon that wriggles out of the Hellmouth, but she cannot bodily replace the members of her family and bear the blows for them. Spike may have been a threat to Joyce when viewed by an uninvited Angel, but never in a million years, which vamps have, would Spike have harmed her. Flowers delivered to her door after her mother's death with no card confirmed that. And he has guarded Dawn, always. Buffy invited Spike into her house to protect Dawn and he did so because, she thought, he adored Buffy. Turned out he loved Little Bit as well, which meant the world to Dawn because she was so lately realized as The Key and uncertain about her life as The Key. And it meant the world to Buffy because she knew then it wasn't all about her.  
Travis stole their child. His conscience intervened before the child was sacrificed, or else Spike would have eviscerated him and, Buffy thinks, she would have as well. Buffy cannot forget the sight of the empty cradle. The imprint of the baby's head. The child was gone, taken.  
Buffy is ready to voice her opinion when she hears it in the words of her husband.  
"Travis did a terrible thing," Spike says, massaging his wife's shoulders. "I forgive about as easily as Joan Rivers lets a knock-off fly on the red carpet of the Oscars. I'd break him into ten easy pieces if he showed up today. Do you really think he's worth a second chance?"  
Dawn takes another drink. "He's really sorry." "Come on, Dawn. Are you sure you're not rebounding off a bad relationship with Roy?"  
And there's that protective instinct. Buffy saw it a little when Spike was first living with them, when the threat of Glory was great and he was as strong as the Slayer. The night he talked to Dawn on the phone when she was at the sleepover. He was her big brother for life in that one conversation.  
And Dawn is still seeking his guidance. She is hypnotized by the sweetness of Spike's tweak of her chin. He's never touched her with anything other than loving hands.  
"You'll do the right thing. It's in your blood. You don't have a choice. You'll do the right thing because it's in you," Spike tells her.  
"Because I'm the Slayer's sister?" Dawn pouts.  
"No, because you've got good sense, you idiot. Familial ties have nothing to do with you making good choices. You're your own person."  
"Spike's right," Buffy concurs. "You are your own person. I didn't say that enough when you were growing up, but you are. And I trust you to do what's right. Always."  
"Aw, Buffy, that's sweet!" Dawn goes for an ultra-hug and almost begins to sob.  
"And you are cut off from anymore alcoholic beverages tonight, Dawn," Buffy tells her little sister.  
"Am I getting to schmaltzy?" Dawn asks over her sister's shoulder.  
"No, you're getting too drunk. And I'm still your big sister."  
  
Dawn told Buffy and Spike that she was visiting only to allow her sister and her brother-in-law a little time together, outside the house, without having to worry about Daniel. They chose for their date a familiar place, far from their current living space. A place set back in time, so that just by entering it they felt the flush of history staining their faces.  
Now, with moonlight streaming through the open window, both naked on the floor, the hardwood floor they are rolling on doesn't seem to hurt as they climax simultaneously.  
Afterwards they lie together under the tartan blanket which served as the spread for their picnic of Buffalo wings, blooming onion and potato skins, all purchased from the local Outback on the way to their date. All of that devoured, Spike buries his mouth in his wife's neck and kisses her as she pulls the blanket up around her shoulders.  
Buffy sighs contentedly. "I had forgotten what this was like."  
Spike stops mid-kiss. "Oh, come on. Just this past week we did it on the bathmat outside the shower, the kitchen table, the sofa. Almost in the lift, but some fool kids got on. What more do you want?"  
"Not the sex, silly," Buffy says, wrapping Spike's arm around her and settling her chin down on his chest. "What it's like to stare out this window."  
"It is a nice window. Nice view. The tree outside seems a bit larger than it used to."  
"I can't believe that it's been six years since I had a bed here and I would lie on it and dream about a life like my neighbors," Buffy says, letting her fingers run the length of her husband's arm. "I would see them come home with their briefcases. You know, they'd be bringing work home with them. But there would be weekends when they wouldn't have briefcases. They'd have suitcases already packed and they'd put them into their cars and drive away. I'd just think about what that would be like. To be carefree just one weekend out of the year. I've never had that. Ever. Not since I was fifteen."  
"You're not feeling carefree now? This is our night off."  
"Our night off," Buffy laughs. "There are vampires rising while we lie here."  
"Yeah, and we'll get them another night. We always do." Spike dips his head to her breasts and laps at her right nipple. "This is our night, pet."  
"'As long as there have been vampires, there has been the Slayer. One girl in the world to find them where they gather and to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their numbers.'" Buffy says.  
Spike lifts his head from his wife's breast and exhales a defeated breath. "Fine. I want some nookie and all you want to do is talk shop. That 'she alone must fight' doggerel is crap and you know it. You've known it since you first got your feet wet here in Sunnydale. With yappy Xander, latent lezbo Willow, Uncle Tom Giles. And let's not forget, the least likely candidate for Up With People, your ex, Angel."  
"So you're saying, as far as Slayers go, I'm weak? That I need other people's help to be successful? If you want nookie, insulting me isn't a way to get it," Buffy says, rolling over on her side and away from Spike.  
"Oh, for Christ's bloody sake, Buffy. All I'm saying is that you're the first Slayer in centuries to get it, you little, but always adorable, prat." He sweeps a hand over her shoulder, a gesture which she rejects in a shrug. "It's rubbish for one girl to stand against the evils of the world. That's why so many before you died before the quarter century mark. You're the first one to say, 'Hey, I need a little help in this.'"  
"I never forged my own weapons, I never slept on a bed of bones."  
"You're feeling inadequate when you fought a god. A god, Buffy! Surely you've read mythology. Men who've fought gods have been turned into constellations, to remind stargazers of their vanity. You fought a god. And lived to tell about it. And you're a star because of it." He kisses her still furrowed brow. He kisses her again and murmurs against her forehead. "I married you."  
"Little helpless Buffy who needs legions of people to help her fight evil because she's not like the Slayers who came before her."  
"I married you because I love you. I married you because I wanted to become one with you. I married you because I didn't want you to be the 'she alone' and come up against the likes of me one night. Forget the Big Bads of the world. The real opponent of the Slayer is the one who wants to make himself a legend by bagging the Slayer. I know. I know."  
And she does know. And she is more than a little disturbed every time he brings the subject up, which isn't often. Sometimes months go by before she'll be sitting across from him at the kitchen table and he'll be critiquing a move she made in the graveyard and he'll liken it to what caused the defeat of the Chinese Slayer (whose name he never knew because he didn't speak Chinese) or the New York Slayer (Nikki, he thought, but he is always unsure about the spelling). He wants to keep her alive. He loves her with all the intensity of the sun, which he will never know. He knows and loves her.  
She turns to him, traces the trench under his cheekbone with her thumb, sees the predatory glare that can be viewed as that of a hunter, but if he is on the hunt tonight, it's just for some confirmation that she will love him always as he does. She remembers the first time she ever saw that look and remembers how she felt. She saw it the first time when she was in chains and the thought of him loving her was repulsive to her. But now there's something else that's occurring to her. Something that's making her giggle. The first time she ever lusted for him.  
"You probably don't remember this," Buffy says, laughing still. "When you were first living here. You took a shower one time. You left the door a little bit open. And as I was passing by, I saw you getting out of the shower. And I just about died."  
"Why? Because I was so abhorrent you didn't want me near a place where you were naked at least once a day?"  
"No. I just..." Buffy has to laugh again because it all seems silly now that she had such thoughts about her now husband at one time. "I was mad at first because you were naked and if Dawn had been the one walking down the hall and looking through the open doorway, she would have seen her first naked man. I thought, how dare he! But then you moved the towel away from...you know. And I saw how big you were. And for a while all I could think about was, 'I saw Spike's penis. I saw Spike's penis.' And I didn't think eww. I though ahh."  
"So you were impressed," Spike says, peering under the blanket and congratulating his little corporal for his early, unheralded reconnaissance mission. And he sees that it's up for another tour of duty.  
"Well, yeah. Who wouldn't be? But I wasn't a good judge. I mean, I'd been with Angel and I didn't see much of his, because we only had that one time. And Parker. Well, I don't even want to talk about him. And Riley, he was just such a Wonder Bread Guy I expected to see colored dots on his, but there was nothing special ops about his undercover agent. But God, when I saw you...I almost thought that if we ever did fuck, you'd kill me."  
"You thought I'd kill you," Spike says, positioning himself between her legs. "By fucking you. Spike would off Slayer #3 by fucking her."  
"I didn't think that literally. But I just thought that as big as you were and as little experience as I had, you'd be a challenge."  
"And when I did fuck you?" Spike asks as he spears her in one long, satisfying stroke.  
Buffy gasps at the sudden invasion. Her eyes meet his. She sees that same look in his eyes. He claims her all over again; just like he did the night they made love for the first time in this very room. No matter the officiating minister who made them man and wife, no matter the bling that shows the world they are married, they were coupled forever the first time they lay together. "You were just right," she says, letting her head loll back. "Goldilocks found a bed that was just right."  
The bed is gone. They are making love on the floor and it is as perfect and true as the first time. Maybe even better now because they don't have to think about it. It just happens. And in the craziest places.  
Even home.  
Afterwards when they are clingy, exhausted and dizzy in each others arms, they don't speak for a long time. Hours of recreating memories have left them speechless about anything going on in the present and for a while they are so locked in the past that Buffy is breathless thinking of the intensity of the first time she called Spike William in the heat of passion. But as this phantom presses down on her, she is aware of others strolling the hallways. Just down the stairs is the room where Spike and her mother sat uncomfortably and for the longest time trying to make small talk. In that same room, a few years later, Buffy found her mother dead. In another room Buffy once pressed a wooden spoon to Spike's chest and nearly killed him. And in this same room, Spike threatened to take blood from Dawn, meant nothing of it, and fucked his future wife in the room where they are now, all in the same night.  
"Honey," Buffy says after a long time with Spike nuzzling her neck. "I don't think I want to live here again."  
"You don't?" he asks, smoothing her hair.  
"No, because I want a place where we can make memories all our own. Just having Dawn home these past couple days, it's like it was before she went to college. With the inquisitive child figured in. But it all fits. I don't think we would fit in this house, not because it's too small, but because it already has too much in it." She lifts her head and her lips connect with her husband's. And after the kiss, as they still remain close, Buffy tells him, "It doesn't matter where we live, as long as I can go to sleep with you every night and wake up next to you every day. That's still the best thing."  
"You know, I've never gotten over the guilt of not being there when you woke up after the first time," Spike feels compelled to say.  
"Get over it," Buffy says, kissing him again. "You've more than made up for it."  
  
Buffy and Spike get home late, or late for the two of them since they've been married with child, with the clock aiming towards the right side of 11:00 pm. In high spirits as they cross the threshold, they are immediately quieted by Dawn's grave expression.  
"Guys, we have a problem," Dawn tells them as they enter the apartment.  
"Is Daniel OK? Is he sick?" Buffy asks, sending her purse to the floor and willing herself not to ask, "Is he gone?"  
"Daniel's fine. Now. But he wasn't about two hours ago."  
"What happened?" Buffy and Spike ask together.  
"Holy shit," Dawn says, pressing her palms against her denim clad thighs. "Don't freak out, but remember when we were having the big discussion about Travis in the kitchen last night? He heard the word kidnap and he wanted to know what that meant."  
"Oh God..." Buffy says. "What did you tell him?"  
Dawn puts her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and shrugs. "What I could. That it means someone takes someone away."  
"And, of course, he asked if he had ever been kidnapped," Spike asks.  
"Yeah," Dawn replies, staring shyly at the floor. "But when I told him what it meant, he knew that he had been kidnapped at one time. He heard enough of the conversation."  
"Was he upset?" Buffy asks.  
"No, not really. Because I told him something."  
"Oh God, Dawn." Buffy gasps. "If the V word came up or the S word came up---  
"No, no, nothing like that. I told him that he would never be taken from us again because we love him and we'll keep him safe forever. But you know, he didn't keep asking why he was taken. I didn't know what to tell him. So I just said that he was so cute someone else wanted him to be his son and it didn't work out. You two took him back and everything was fine."  
"But did he believe you?" Buffy asks.  
Dawn's lips form a straight line. "He stopped asking me about it fifteen minutes ago. He wanted me to tell him everything would be OK and I told him everything would be OK until he went to sleep," Dawn says in a voice reminiscent of the spirits Buffy and Spike visited that night at the old place. The brown irises of Dawn's eyes are suddenly adrift in tears and she looks skyward as she pretends she's not starting to cry and fans the telltale moisture away with her hands. "But I know one thing. I'm not going to talk to Travis again. That talk I had with Daniel brought it all back. How angry I was and how angry I still am that Travis used me to get to Daniel. I love that little boy. I love him so much. And I can't imagine what my life would be like without him these past five years. As much as I get irritated with his questions and as much as I dislike having to share my old room with him, he's just the best kid."  
Buffy and Spike don't have to be told that. They couldn't have asked for a more loving and dutiful child. They have to offer smiles to each other in silent congratulation of a job well done.  
"But, oh well," Dawn says, collecting tears in the crook of her index finger. "How was your night? Did you guys have fun?"  
"Yeah, we did," Buffy says, catching her husband's hand. She gives Spike a sly wink.  
That wink makes plain what their evening entailed, much like the pink robe did in the aftermath of Buffy and Spike's afternoon delight while Dawn was at school. She now feels that she's really home.  
"Where'd you guys go?" Dawn asks.  
"Oh, we found a place where there were some spooks," Spike says, his gaze locking with his lady love's.  
"So, on your night off, you were ghost-busting?" Dawn asks.  
Buffy looks deep into her husband's eyes. She almost giggles again remembering the story she told. But she almost sobs again remembering the vacant stare in her mother's eyes as she lay in the living room of the house they cannot afford and have decided they couldn't live in again. Oh, how Dawn cried when she found out...  
"You can't kill ghosts, Dawn," Buffy says. "They linger on, good or bad. But sometimes they do show us the way." 


	8. Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

"The sun's down now! The sun's down now!" Daniel exclaims from the window in the kitchen where he is daring to take a peek at the world under the heavy blind. He has learned that a little sunshine is fine, as long as the blind doesn't fly up. But he is so ecstatic tonight that his little hand loses its grip of the blind and it flips around the roller at the top like the threat of a serpent's tongue.

He turns to his parents, with the ready, "I didn't do it," expression on his face. They don't have to admonish him tonight. The sun has set far enough on the horizon that it's no longer a threat to his Daddy.

"It's OK, Daniel. It's almost winter now. Days are getting shorter," Buffy tells her son as she puts the last of the sandwiches into the picnic basket.

Spike is ferrying four beers over from the fridge in hopes that there might still be space for them, but Buffy's look explains that the capacity of the basket has been exceeded and there's no room for extras. Then a bottle of Merlot is produced and suddenly there is lots and lots of room.

"We'll have one glass each, but that's it," she whispers to her husband as she displaces the coleslaw and buries the wine under it. "We _will_ have to drive our child home afterward."

Daniel has been promised a picnic in the park for weeks and he has been assured that he and his parents would have dinner together near the carousel as soon as the sun and the weather permitted and tonight is the night. Southern California weather is in compliance with its balmy reputation and after 6:00 on a Friday it's still 70 degrees. Everything has come together.

"We're all packed," Buffy says, securing the lid of the picnic basket. "I think we're ready."

That's all Daniel has to hear. He's out the door before either of his parents can say whoa.

Buffy runs to the door and yells, "Daniel, you go one step further and this whole thing is off!"

But she can already hear his feet pounding down the stairs to the parking lot. "I'd better catch him," she resolves. "Honey, will you grab a blanket from the linen closet?"

Spike goes to the linen closet and opens the louvered doors. He brings down a blanket from the top of the stack and a shower of sand falls at his feet. This was the blanket they used this past summer, July 4th weekend, when they went to the shore at night for the brilliant fireworks display on the pier. It was hot, even at nine o'clock at night and he and Buffy constantly had to keep Daniel from going into the water. They sat on this blanket watching the pyrotechnical display overhead and drank warm beer and later strolled the shoreline, cooling their feet in the encroaching surf as Daniel looked for seashells and hoped to find a jellyfish because they looked so cool in the brightly colored picture books that he thumbed through at the library. It was a perfect night and they came home too exhausted to put the blanket in the wash and elected to just fluff it out and put it away. Spike smiles down at the sparkling bits of sand on the floor. And then something happens.

Before him, it's as though his sight is being defragmented. Suddenly he is seeing the folded blankets sheets and towels as Rubik's Cubes. A silver sliver resembling the spiral blind of a notebook shimmers in front of him and even when he closes his eyes, he can still see it. And then it's as though lightning has struck the very core of his brain and he is knocked down to his knees from its force.

"Ow!" he cries out, wondering if he really has been thunder struck. He shakes his head and braces his hands against the floor to rise again. But just as he gets to his feet, he is interrupted again, this time by a pain so searing he has to howl. And then he can't see a thing except a wall of white, then complete blackness.

When his senses clear, after moments of lying on the floor in uncertainty and fear, he hears a voice saying, "Daddy?"

This can't look good to a little boy, seeing his father moaning on the floor after being knocked down by an invisible force. Spike is about to respond to his son as he feels the core of his brain being ripped apart again by storms. And he can't help screaming in front of his horrified son.

"Daddy, what's wrong?" he hears Daniel ask.

As he lies on the floor, the pain now so great he cannot even think about how his son might be perceiving this spectacle, he moistens his mouth and requests in a strangulated voice, "Daniel, go get your mother."

Buffy is drumming her fingers against the steering wheel of the mini-van. What _is_ taking Spike so long? She has her answer when she sees her son fleeing the outside staircase as though a bomb has gone off inside.

She is on the pavement the second she sees Daniel and through his sobs she can discern, there's something wrong with Daddy.

Her heart races to her throat, almost beating the time that it takes her to the fly up the stairs to the apartment where the door is open wide and Spike is crawling on the floor.

She has to will herself not to cry out when she sees her husband stricken and somehow paler than she has ever seen him.

"Spike, what is it?" she begs as she leans close to him, taking the stricture of his limbs and the whiteness of his eyes to be some kind of possession. She's not even sure if he's heard her. "Honey, what's wrong?"

"My head," she says through strained lips as he rides out the tail end of another brilliant pain. "My head!"

"What? Your head?" She whispers sharply, "Is it the chip?"

He nods as he groans, another pain building. "Oh God…here it comes again…"

"But the chip hasn't worked in years…wha…how…oh, honey…" It's as though someone is twisting her insides around with a slow and sadistic fork, to see him press his palms against his head as he screams and tries to fight it, but he's left defenseless and she grabs at her own head. "What did you do? Did you do anything to set it off?"

"Nothing!" he strains to say. "I was getting a blanket for us."

She is trying to think, but everything occurring in her head rates a distant second to the thought that her husband is in pain and she can't do anything but watch him.

He lies panting now, trying to catch breath he is storied not to have. For a moment it seems the panic is over and he rises to his elbows. His eyes search hers and he can't find a thing that makes him feel like everything is going to be all right. He sees only fear. Even when he fought her when they were younger, he never saw such terror in her gold-flecked green eyes.

When the world is threatened she is all business. When her world is threatened, she is all too human.

"I'm OK," Spike tells her. "It was just a spell. Probably won't happen again." Her eyes won't accept this as she turns a worried glance his way. "Darling, I'm all right now."

"I'm sorry, Daddy…I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" Daniel is standing by them sobbing, his small face a torrent of tears and guilt.

As Buffy hears her son, she is ashamed that for a few minutes she didn't even know he was there. "Oh, honey," she says, scooting over to him and taking him in her arms. "What makes you think this is your fault?"

He sniffs loudly. "I opened the blind and that made Daddy 'lergic."

"Oh, no, sweetie," Buffy soothes him. "You didn't do anything wrong. This is something else. And look. He's better now. He just had a bad headache. You get headaches too. This was just a really bad one for Daddy."

"Yeah, Daniel. I'm OK. See? No more pain. Now let's get to the car and…" Like a dream he swears in sleep he's had before, the pain returns again. "Oh…OH…OH!" It's somehow worse than before. Searing, piercing, like a hot poker driven deep into his skull. As he allows himself to whimper from the after effects he can't even feel humiliation or feel for his son's disappointment that the three of them aren't going anywhere tonight.

Later in the evening, after they have eaten their sandwiches at the kitchen table and Spike has endured nearly three hours of the worst pain known to man or demon, he lies with an ice pack on his forehead on their bed. Buffy shuts the door to Daniel's room, effectively closing out the cries behind it, but she can still hear them through the thin wood. While she was putting him to bed, Spike had several bad episodes and Daniel shivered and his eyes got dinner plate wide and filled with tears and she assured him what was going on as not his fault, but she doesn't think he believes her. He won't sleep tonight. He closed his eyes as she was leaving but he kept crying and saying he was sorry and he'd never do it again, he swore.

"How's the boy?" Spike asks in a raspy voice.

Buffy shrugs. "I don't know. I read to him. He kept asking questions. You know the drill." She crawls onto the bed and opens her arms for her husband.

When he relaxes in her embrace he can see her features marred by too much concern and little comfort. She is holding him, but she is distant, somewhere else, almost as dead as he feels.

"I have to call someone. There's a number I can call," she says. "I could call that."

"What, 911? Yeah, that would work. They'd pronounce me DOA, luv. Because I am."

"No, there's another number. Something. The Southern California Pizza Kitchen." Buffy reaches for the phone on the bedside table.

"You're ordering pizza now?"

"It was one of their numbers."

The Initiative, he suspects when she says she is dialing one of _their_ numbers. He hopes it is anyway.

"Yes, hello, extra cheese, no sauce." Buffy says anxiously into the phone.

"Is that how you used to ask for Riley?" Spike asks.

"Shhh. It's a code word," Buffy says. "Yes. Extra cheese and no sauce. No, I don't want it delivered. Well, maybe I do, or I don't…I don't know…I'm trying to reach Riley Finn…he used to work there. Maybe not for the Southern California Pizza Kitchen but…OK, so he's not there. He never worked there. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about. OK, I'll try another number." She hangs up. "I have other numbers to call," she tells her husband.

He has no doubt. She would dial all night for him, to anyplace, anywhere for him.

And she does.

By two o'clock in the morning, Buffy has called every take-out place in California that may be a front for a long-defunct government agency. With the last call she apologizes into the phone, "And again, I'm sorry, Mr. Kim, for waking you and your wife. I hope your daughter has a healthy baby."

She puts the phone down and crosses her arms against her chest. Her husband has been quiet for the last thirty minutes, lying there on the bed with the ice pack still frosting his forehead.

"I'm not asleep yet," he lets her know. He removes the icepack from his head and says, "Buffy, you've done enough tonight."

"No," she says. "There's someone else I could call. And he's probably awake now." She sighs and drops to the bed, letting her exhaustion spill her onto the mattress until she is curled up in a fetal position next to her husband. "I just don't know how you would feel about it."

He knows. Angel. Someone who has the power to find anyone anywhere at anytime, powered by the law firm of Wolfram and Hart. Surfing the web one night Buffy found out that Angel had been made the head of the law firm and she and Spike sent congratulatory e-mails to him, tongue-in-cheek, wine-in-belly. Angel fired back with an e-mail that congratulated them on their first year of matrimony and made them both feel like heels. He included his personal cell number. Buffy thumb tacked it to the bulletin board in the kitchen in case of emergency.

There hasn't been the threat of an apocalypse since their marriage and sometimes they think that their wedded bliss has sealed the Hellmouth, but they can't be too certain. They both agreed at some point that Angel would be a solid ally, provided he hasn't experienced ultimate happiness. Spike told Buffy he would fight at Angel's side as long as he knew that Buffy was at his.

"I could call him," Buffy says. "I know he could find him."

"Using one ex to find another ex. It's so us, isn't it? We just do crazy things all the time," Spike laughs.

"You don't mind, do you?"

"Oh…OH! OW! OW!" He rises from the pillow, clutching his head again as the pain rampages through his brain. It lasts for only seconds and when it ends he's left wondering how bad it's going to be the next time and if he really wants to be around for the next time because the pain is so bad this time he wants to die. He lies against the pillow, his face galled by the latest eruption inside his head. "Call the poof. I don't care."

In the kitchen now with the lights down and the refrigerator steadily humming, Buffy migrates towards the bulletin board where, behind a doctor's calling card with her yearly scheduled gynecologist visit, two years overdue, she finds the number. She has always known it was there and the temptation to call it has been great at times, no greater than when she was up late feeding Daniel, coming back from Patrol, or just putting burgers on the George Foreman Grill. She got over wanting to call the number after two years of marriage, but she always knew it was there, just in case. She sometimes believed that by calling it she would be in high school again, Angel would be new and exciting to her and this time things would be different. She knows that things will always be the same with Angel. They'll always be in a cemetery imagining a future that will never be.

Tonight, with the faucet dripping and the refrigerator humming, she is trembling as she dials the number written on the lip of an envelope. She hopes there will be at least four of five rings so that she can prepare herself to say his name. But there is only one. And she doesn't say his name at all. She can't say anything after she hears him say hello.

Too much is coming through the phone. History condensed into one two-syllable word. Suddenly she is sixteen, wearing boots, a bit chubbier than she is now, and wearing a lot of eye make-up. She is self-conscious just thinking of how she looked when she first heard the name Angel. She was doomed to love him the minute she felt his shadow and when the shadow had a name, a face and a kiss things were no longer black or white. There were bad guys who really were bad and bad guys who really were good. It is an ambiguity she is still fighting in her slimmed down, toned present self. She is married to it, actually.

But when she hears his voice, there is no marriage, there is no child, there are no broken appliances around her. There is only the past and a kiss by a tombstone.

"Hey," she finally says, absorbing his roaming minutes, she is sure. She can't imagine Angel with a cellphone. He couldn't even program a VCR when she knew him.

"Buffy?" he asks.

There is a whisper of silk over skin and she realizes she has called him in bed while she is in her kitchen. Plates are unwashed in the sink. Daniel's macaroni from an afternoon snack. Spike's mug. Her discarded sleeve from a Hot Pocket which should have gone into the trash but didn't quite make its mark.

"It's me," she says as she drizzles dishwashing liquid into the sink and turns on the faucet.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

There have been times when she wanted to call him just to chat and there's a part of her that thinks it's rude just to impose on his sleep and make requests. But this is important. And she has to clear her mind and remind herself why she's calling him. When Spike cries out in pain, calling for God, she quickly remembers her mission.

She swishes the sudsy water around and though it's hot, she keeps her hand steady in the maelstrom she's creating. "Spike is sick."

"Spike?" comes the reply.

She can imagine Angel thinking of Spike as his one time protégé whom he delighted in dominating and belittling and then as an enemy, whom he still enjoyed dominating and belittling. He is wondering why he should care about this, why the hell this should matter. And if Buffy were as high school as she felt when she heard Angel's voice for the first time in years, she'd be applauding Spike's pain, but she knows now Spike is more love than hate, less demon and more father. She hopes Angel knows that Spike has gotten beyond her husband's fangy days. What was it Angel wrote to them in his e-mail? She recalls something along the lines of, "Glad you are happy. Send me pics of the baby."

"It's the chip. It's malfunctioning," Buffy tells her ex-lover, wondering still about the hate Angel has for the man groaning in earshot of where she stands in the kitchen as she washes the day's dirty dishes.

"What, it's making him kill now?" Angel asks.

She knows now Angel hasn't gotten beyond anything. To him Spike still equals killer. "Angel, he hasn't killed in years."

"Sorry. Sarcasm kicking in," he says. "Are you OK?"

"No!" she says, as she swishes the brush around the plate of congealed macaroni and cheese her son asked for after school and couldn't finish. She told him that they would all be going out for a picnic as soon as the sun set and he ate sparingly. He was so excited he couldn't finish. "He's in pain." She remembers the bright brass music that played on the radio as her mother battled brain cancer and an alien overhead and she scrubbed and cried in the kitchen. She is washing dishes again while someone she loves is battling something deep in the brain. Now she is not crying. She is too incredulous to cry because, even after all the things she has faced, it seems unfair that there is another person she loves who is suffering while she washes dishes.

"What can I do?" he asks.

And that's just what she wanted to hear. "I need you to find Riley Finn."

"Riley."

"Yes. He's the only one who can really help us."

"What makes you think he'll want to help you?"

"Because it's the right thing to do, Angel. Spike is a father now. He has a family. He's different from how he was 120 years ago or even six years ago."

"I don't know, Buffy," he says, yawning. "You're thinking about asking a guy for help who sees the world in black and white."

"There is no black and white, Angel. You should know that more than anyone."

"Yeah, but does Riley know that."

"I don't know. I don't know. I'm too tired to think right now. Just find him for us. For me, Angel."

There is a pause on the other end of the phone and she hears the silk being shifted again.

After many minutes of silence in which Buffy thinks Angel has either nodded off or they have been disconnected, Buffy says, "Angel, please. I know you and Spike haven't been friends for the last century, but if you can't think about Spike, just think about Daniel. He found Spike tonight screaming in pain. We were going to a picnic and I just had to send Daniel in to find out what was taking his daddy so long. I really didn't think he'd stop crying tonight. He loves his Daddy so much. And Spike is such a good father. You wouldn't believe how gentle and sweet he is with Daniel. They're best friends, I swear."

More silence ensues from the other end and Buffy thinks she's speaking to just a ghost and there is no one there.

"I love him, Angel." She is surprised how freely she divulges this avowal to Angel, asleep or not there, whatever state he may be in. She wants him to know. "I love him. He's good to me. We love each other. I understand how you might not be able to forgive me for loving a demon and someone you hate, but he's the father of my child. He's changed. He really has."

There is still no reply. Buffy wonders if _her_ phone has been cut off for non-payment. But she paid the bill, she's sure. It was $59.73. Or was that the cable bill? As she's about to dash into the living room to turn on the TV and see if it's still on, Angel mumbles into the phone, "OK."

"OK, what?"

"We'll find him for you. Riley."

"Do you think you can?"

"Wolfram and Hart found Jimmy Hoffa twenty years ago."

"Really? Alive?"

"Well, not when they found him, but he is now. But that's another story for another two a.m. Now, the last time you saw him he was headed for---

"South America. He was going to South America. It was covert ops."

"Doesn't matter. Covert or not, we should be able to find him."

Suddenly she can feel her shoulders relax. There are tears in her eyes. And she's remembering why she loved him so much at one time. He was always ready with the answers. Sometimes they were not the answers she wanted to hear, but in this case, this is an answered prayer.

"I'll call you as soon as I know anything, all right?" Angel tells her.

"Yes. You have my number?"

She hears the sheets gliding over his skin again. "I've had your number for a long time, Buffy."

She blushes as though he has just said in a suggestive growl, "What are you wearing?" It seems entirely inappropriate and she's reading too much into his sleepy tone. From her bedroom her husband is muttering curses, gasping, then calling for her.

"I've got to go. Spike…"

"He needs you. I can hear him. Go to him."

She nods even though she knows he can't see her, says good-bye and puts the phone back on the cradle.

She walks away from the kitchen, switching off the lights as she goes. She is in the dark until she returns to their bedroom and all the lights are on there. Her husband is lying flat on his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His head moves slowly back and forth across his pillow as he moans.

She turns off the lights until the room is pitch black. She unfolds the covers from her side of the bed, kicks off her shoes, and gets in. She is not going to bother with the formalities of face washing, teeth brushing or gown donning tonight. She is just going to try to sleep with Spike at her side.

"Buffy," Spike says as he reaches for her.

"Sh, I'm here," she says, taking his hand and touching it to her face.

"I got knocked out there for a bit but I know you were going to talk to Angel," he says hoarsely.

"I did."

His hand stills on her face and she hears him exhale deeply. But after the breath, his hand remains on her face and he strokes her cheek.

"When you talked to him…was it…" he struggles to ask.

"It was all business, honey. Strictly business," she calms his fears.

"But still it must have been---

"I asked him to find Riley. That's it."

"Oh God…" he shudders as he drives his head against her shoulder.

"Is it going off again?" she asks, ready to brace against the pain with him.

"No," he says. "You just said the name Riley in our bed. I may never have an erection here again."

"That's all right," she smiles, lighting a kiss on his forehead. "We still have the bathroom floor and the kitchen floor, the kitchen table, the sofa, the basement the…" As her purrs meet his ears she feels him growing rigid beside her, but not in the way she is used to when she whispers huskily to him in the night.

"Here it comes again," he announces.

She holds him, feeling every tremor, hearing every insane word coming from his lips. When it's over this time he is quiet, limp, completely motionless. If he weren't dust, she'd swear he was dead.

Spike sleeps against her for three uneventful hours until the phone rings at 6:00.

It is Angel.

"We worked all night. Our scissors here are blunt from cutting through all the government red tape. But we've gotten through. Riley Finn has been in Iraq setting up the provisional government for five years."

"Did you talk to him?" Buffy asks.

"We got the message though."

"What did you say?"

"We only said that you needed him."

"You didn't say anything about Hostile 17?"

"No, we only said you needed him for something very important."

Angel seems as covert as the ops that Riley has been executing in this war that Buffy protested but cannot fight. She is needed too much elsewhere. A convenient excuse, but in this case, one that has merit since she straddles the Hellmouth at home and keeps the spewing demons in check.

"Well thank you," Buffy says, not knowing exactly what to say.

"You're welcome," Angel says slowly as though he were having trouble finding the right words as well. And then he does find them. "Buffy, if there's ever a time that you ever don't need me, just call me."

Buffy nods as she tries to imagine such a time. And there they are in the cemetery again. "Right," she says. And she hangs up the phone.


End file.
